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And on this, the last day of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
mini_nanowrimo where I'm watching the sun rise through a window at work, the last day I decided I would just write and see what came. This is it...
Title: The Boy Who Walked On Stilts - Part One of Two
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Rating: PG13 (Language)
Category: SPN - Gen
Word Count: 3,174
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no offense, no money.
Summary: In a world where John Winchester has given his life early for the hunt, his sons are raised separately. One by a holy man and one by a hunter.
Dean is twenty-three years old when Pastor Jim Murphy says, “So you know how we thought your brother was dead?”
Dean is rubbing wood polish into the pews to give them that nice sheen and try and buff out the scratches. He likes the church. He’s always felt a little weird living in a tiny house behind, right next to a small graveyard, but the church he’s always liked just fine.
It’s really the only place he’s ever felt one hundred percent safe.
Dean’s hand pauses in its rhythmic rubbing. He’d just noticed that someone had inscribed Timmy wuz here into the seat, probably in a fit of pique for being stuck in a holy house on an otherwise sunny Sunday. He’d been wondering just how to get it out. He could feel Jim standing behind him in the alley between the pews but he couldn’t turn around quite yet.
“Dean?” Jim presses, starting to sound a little concerned. The Pastor had always been matter-of-fact to a quite insane degree and had never learned the subtle art of breaking news gently, a weird quirk for a man of the cloth. Dean had figured that was why folks around the run-down patch of city that was his flock liked him. They had hard lives and they didn’t need to hear about the Lord working in mysterious ways.
“Just…” Dean says, putting out a hand and dropping the cloth he’d been using. “Gimme a minute.”
He’s had dreams about this. Of course he has. Fanciful imaginings about a teary reunion because there were never any bodies found. For the first three or four years he’d been with Jim, Dean had pictured and re-pictured just how John Winchester would stride through those big double-doors at the front of the church, probably herding Sammy in front of him.
Sorry ‘bout that son, he’d say. No other explanation. Dean didn’t want to tarnish his fantasy with impossible details. He’d seen the photos, the Impala upside down and half-buried in mud. Big claw marks all along the body of it. John had only been going out to do some reconnaissance and teach little five year old Sammy tracking. Dean had for once been allowed to stay behind because there’d been a church picnic on the next day and he’d been helping Jim set up.
Then…
There’d been blood and some drag marks but nothing else. No evidence to say that either Winchester, big or small, had walked away from that clearing. Dean sees it in his nightmares sometimes, the wheels still spinning on the car and the rain falling, tree boughs hanging heavy with water.
He sees a tiny little pale hand jutting out from under the upturned car roof and he wakes screaming.
“What are you saying?” Dean asks, surprised at how shaky his voice sounds. So far as he knew, he was nine years old when he lost the rest of his family, the only person left to him in the whole world being Jim Murphy.
“How about we go grab a cup o’ Joe?” Jim proposes, gently removing the pot of wood polish Dean had been gripping in his other hand, so tightly he had to curl and uncurl his fingers a few times when he lets go to get the feeling back.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Dean says and it’s not a question.
000
It’s simple really, when Jim lays it all out. He’d come across a hunter while looking for a certain book to assist in a Redcap infestation and he’s heard a tale that had made his heart nearly stop. He’d visited a junkyard owned by a man named Bobby Singer and been served tea by a tall boy with shaggy hair who he’d had to look at twice because there was something familiar about him.
Jim had asked about the boy and had been told he was Bobby’s nephew. He’d accepted that at face value and had only pried loose the real story later when Bobby had relaxed around him and they’d both been working through translations, the boy coming in and out to help occasionally because Bobby had explained that he was a natural for the dead languages, like he’d been born in the wrong time.
Bobby, warily at first because the last thing he’d wanted was Family Services called down on him by a well-meaning preacher, had reared the boy from the age of five after finding him while hunting a particularly vicious pack of black dogs. He’d come upon an overturned Chevy and had found the boy wedged almost upside down in the foot well, like someone had shoved him there out of harm’s way.
No sign of the parents.
The little boy had been huge eyed and wary for the first few weeks Bobby had taken care of him, while sending out gentle inquiries to see if he could find the kid’s parents. He’d assumed, incorrectly Jim found, that the child had simply been a victim of misfortune, his Daddy running off the road on a particularly treacherous stretch. Having perhaps survived the accident, the hapless man had then fallen prey to creatures of darkest nightmare.
The only name Bobby had been able to get out of the boy after that first silent period had been Dean and so that’s what he’d been called for two months, right up until one morning during breakfast he’d corrected Bobby, finally stating emphatically that his name was in actual fact Sam and Dean was his big brother.
While Jim explains, he also adds a small lament to the fact that if John Winchester had actually been more involved in the wider hunting community instead of keeping mostly to himself, there would have been a chance Bobby would have recognised the family by their names and taken steps to track down survivors.
He hadn’t though, assuming Sam was a civilian but not willing to part with him after a time, fearful for Sam’s safety with a nice, normal foster family. He was fully aware once darkness found you, it had a way of happening on you again. The only place Sam would sleep behind salted windows and iron-inlaid doors was with Bobby.
000
Sam Singer is maybe six foot five and lean with shaggy hair falling over his eyes. Dean’s thinking, how is this my little brother as he watches Sam walk the warped planks out the front of Bobby’s house and stop at the top step leading down off the porch while he pulls up. He sees Sam startle a little when he notices Dean is driving an Impala, although he’s not sure if Sam would know it’s not the Impala.
Jim had let him buy a car when he was seventeen and Dean had been pretty adamant about what he’d wanted.
That little jerk of recognition is all Dean needs to believe this is his Sam but he understands Jim’s caution. The tale woven by Bobby makes it sound like it would be impossible for Sam to be anyone other than the Winchester they thought they’d lost but they’ve both met the kind of con-artists that could create this level of believability. Dean’s not really sure what anyone would hope to achieve by miraculously resurrecting a faux Sam but they have enemies and not just the demon kind.
Dean gets out of the car when he pulls up and waits on Jim to emerge from the passenger side. Three dogs, mangy looking mongrels but with an alertness to them that would tell anyone they were well-trained, seem to appear out of nowhere and place themselves between Dean, Jim and the house.
Dean knows these aren’t the kind of dogs you pat, probably the best sort of early-warning system since they can smell something unnatural from miles away. A fourth dog comes out of the house and stops by Sam’s side, his tail stilling and his ears going up when Sam lays a hand on his head.
“Uh, hi,” Dean greets and for an ice breaker, it’s pretty crap. Sam’s lips twitch a little and he rubs one of the dog’s ears between his thumb and forefinger but the mutt doesn’t take its eyes off the interlopers on its property.
“Hey,” Sam returns and then they both just kind of stare at each other, at a complete loss as to what to say next. Dean isn’t sure whether a hug is in order or a manly handshake. He’s seen family reunions on television and they’re always tear-filled wailing-fests. Dean figures Winchesters just aren’t the kind to tear at their faces and blubber but he also isn’t sure why they’re both being so… stilted.
The man who must be Bobby Singer appears behind Sam and lays a hand on his shoulder. This seems to break Sam out of some kind of paralysis because he thumps down the stairs but comes to a dead halt when he’s an arm’s length away. His fists clench at his sides like he’s not sure what to do with his hands. The dog has shadowed him down and now looks at him and whines, like its looking for a lead.
“You’re Dean?” Sam hazards and then rubs his hand over the back of his head, grinning wryly. “I mean… you’re Dean,” he repeats. “Man, I remember you being taller.”
“Yeah, well, I remember you being shorter,” Dean snorts and then they’re both just grinning at each other. Sammy had always had dimples deep enough to keep change in and it makes something warm break free in Dean’s chest to see them still on this bigger version. Jim clears his throat and Dean steps aside. “This is Pastor Jim,” he introduces even though they’ve already met and he grimaces because he remembers that as soon as he’s said it.
“How about you fellas come inside? I’m freezing my ba… er, bits off out here,” Bobby proposes and Dean gestures Jim to go in front of him, bringing up the rear of their small group. His eyes keep straying to Sam because maybe there’s some Sammy in there somewhere but it’s buried deep if there is.
000
Dean’s not sure what he was expecting. For Sam Singer to feel like a stranger wasn’t it though.
He watches Sam moving about his bedroom, sitting on Sam’s single bed with his back against the wall. There’re no posters up or any other teen crap. If anything Sam seems to be living more like a monk than Jim does. There’s spareness to his room. There’s a symbol painted on his ceiling that Dean wants to ask about but isn’t sure how. Maybe it’s the only sign of teenage rebellion… or some major magic mojo.
“This is…” Sam starts and then flails a little. He’s puttering around, wringing his hands in the bottom of his shirt. Stepping over the ever-present dog as he moves about the room. Dean hasn’t even gotten around to asking what it’s called.
“Pretty freakin’ weird,” Dean finishes for him and Sam nods. Dean wants to be thrilled by this turn of events but in the back of his mind he’s cautious. There’re so many questions he wants answered that they stick in his throat and he can’t get a single one out.
“Do you…” Sam begins to ask and then bites his lip. “Do you know what happened to our dad?”
Our dad. The words resonate in Dean’s mind. He got used to everything being in the singular ever since he lost everyone. To think someone else can lump themselves in with him is a little overwhelming after all this time.
Dean swallows hard and then shakes his head. “I thought you both died,” he admits and Sam winces.
“Bobby said I would’ve if he hadn’t been out hunting those damn things,” Sam explains, finally dropping to the single chair in the room, set in front of a makeshift desk which is just a long plank of wood fastened to the wall. It looks like maybe Sam made it himself, or Bobby. “You couldn’t see the overturned car from the road and the only reason the dogs didn’t find me was because it was pouring. Washed away my scent.”
“You must’a been terrified,” Dean encourages, because he wants to hear this. He desperately wants to hear everything. He’s missed a significant portion of his little brother’s life.
Dean stills because thinking that makes him realise that he’s pretty much resolved within himself that this is Sam Winchester, alive and whole before him.
“I don’t really remember much,” Sam says. “Just little things and not much from before it happened. Bobby reckons I blanked a lot because of the trauma, that maybe I might’ve even seen what happened to dad…” Sam shudders a little and puts a hand to his mouth, tugging at his bottom lip.
“I remember you, though,” Sam says, his voice sounding completely different. He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Not you specifically but I remember my brother Dean. He gave me airplane rides and the last of the Lucky Charms. He made pillow forts with me and was the biggest and toughest kid I knew or would ever know.”
Dean can feel a blush heating his cheeks and he ducks his head. He remembers a little kid dogging his footsteps, always asking for him first when he’d had a bad dream, even before their father. There was shaggy hair, big eyes and a killer puppy-dog look that got them free pie, guaranteed. Dean digs something out from his jacket pocket and holds it up.
It’s a small sneaker, ragged and worn, stained with flecks of mud.
“This is all Jim found,” Dean says, turning it over in his hands, running the loose end of the laces through his fingers.
“You kept that?”
“We eventually got rid of all your other clothes,” Dean says. “But I couldn’t… the knot’s still tied. It was the first time you’d done it all on your own. You were so damn proud. So damn little.” Dean chokes on the last word, ducks his head again and presses the sneaker hard against his forehead. He feels a hand, gentle and hesitant on his shoulder. Sam is leaning down, hair falling across his eyes.
“Sorry,” Dean says, taking a large gulp of air and grinding his knuckles into his eyes. He didn’t cry but his eyes feel gritty like it was a close thing.
“No, it’s fine,” Sam assures him, standing back up and wrapping his arms around his torso.
000
Sam’s out back feeding the dogs when Bobby sits down across from Dean and Jim, thumping a large tome into the middle of the table. He opens it and Dean can see an etching of the same symbol painted on Sam’s roof.
Heavy-duty magic mojo it is then.
“I figured you’d ask,” Bobby says, looking at Dean and he throws a glance at Jim and sees the older man raise his eyebrows.
“A Devil’s Trap?” Dean prods when he leans forward and has a look at just what the symbol is. He’s heard of them in passing but he’s never seen one used as a defence in quite such a way. “Is Sam’s bedroom supposed to be like a panic room?”
“Kinda,” Bobby says and his gaze shifts away. Dean is acutely aware that he’s holding something back but he understands. They’re still pretty much strangers and Bobby has as little reason to trust him and Jim as they do. “We were having some problems with Sam having… dreams,” Bobby continues. “Normal dream catchers just weren’t cutting it.”
From the way he says it, Dean’s pretty sure Bobby’s not talking about the normal teenage boy dreams that result in embarrassed slinks to the laundry room late at night.
“What kind of dreams?” Jim asks and Dean’s grateful that he’s not the only one whose inner warning-bells went off immediately. Hunters are a superstitious lot and most, through a veil of grief and anger, can only see in black and white when it comes to anything out of the ordinary.
Bobby seems to come to a decision because he takes a deep breath, casts a wary eye at the back door where Sam will emerge when he’s done, then says, “He’d have nightmares. Bad ones.”
“You think maybe a demon’s stalking him in his sleep or something?” Dean asks, confused. Bobby shakes his head.
“No, I don’t think you get it. He knows what the symbol in his room is but he thinks it’s for his protection.”
Dean suddenly feels cold all over. He can picture Sam’s bedroom in his mind’s eye clearly. He can see the Devil’s Trap and where it’s positioned.
Right above Sam’s bed.
“Things shift around. The window’s broken a half dozen times. Sometimes… sometimes he dreams things that haven’t happened yet.”
“You’re not worried about something getting in,” Dean breathes, palms pressing down against the table hard. “You’re worried about something getting out.”
000
“I love that boy with everything in me,” Bobby says, staring hard at both Jim and Dean. “But I deal with possessions mostly, lost my Annabelle that way and there’s something…” Bobby makes a helpless gesture with his hand, before tugging on the bill of his cap to bring it down lower over his eyes. “All your new age-y hippie types would try and tell you that… abilities like Sam seems to be developing are just natural evolution of humans. I’m sorry I can’t live in that world where this is a good sign.”
“It’s not necessarily a bad sign either,” Jim ventures. “There’s a lot still outside our understanding.
“You’d better not be tryin’ to lead me down the God has a plan path because I’m damn sure he didn’t plan on my Annabelle gouging her eyes out with her own thumbs because something black and nasty was wearing her like a cheap suit,” Bobby almost growls.
“I’m not trying to start anything like that,” Jim says, holding his hands up, palms out. “In my lifetime I’ve seen a lot more evidence of the damned than the divine, more’s the pity.”
“Sorry Pastor,” Bobby says although it sounds like his heart isn’t in the apology. “There are those that see tragedy as a way to salvation. I ain’t one of them.”
“What do you think is happening?” Dean asks in a small voice. It’s been his life up to now, forever cursed. Finding his brother miraculously alive after all this time seemed too good to be true and now, apparently it’s pretty evident it was.
“I can’t say for sure but what I do know is that I’ll stand between that boy and hell if it kills me.”
“Is everything okay?” Sam’s voice is quiet and a little nervous from the doorway. He’s got snow on his shoulders and in his hair and he tugs a scarf down from over his nose and mouth as he enters the room.
“Just fine, kiddo,” Bobby assures him, closing the book with a snap.
Part Two
mini_nanowrimo where I'm watching the sun rise through a window at work, the last day I decided I would just write and see what came. This is it...Title: The Boy Who Walked On Stilts - Part One of Two
Author:
kellifer_fic Rating: PG13 (Language)
Category: SPN - Gen
Word Count: 3,174
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no offense, no money.
Summary: In a world where John Winchester has given his life early for the hunt, his sons are raised separately. One by a holy man and one by a hunter.
Dean is twenty-three years old when Pastor Jim Murphy says, “So you know how we thought your brother was dead?”
Dean is rubbing wood polish into the pews to give them that nice sheen and try and buff out the scratches. He likes the church. He’s always felt a little weird living in a tiny house behind, right next to a small graveyard, but the church he’s always liked just fine.
It’s really the only place he’s ever felt one hundred percent safe.
Dean’s hand pauses in its rhythmic rubbing. He’d just noticed that someone had inscribed Timmy wuz here into the seat, probably in a fit of pique for being stuck in a holy house on an otherwise sunny Sunday. He’d been wondering just how to get it out. He could feel Jim standing behind him in the alley between the pews but he couldn’t turn around quite yet.
“Dean?” Jim presses, starting to sound a little concerned. The Pastor had always been matter-of-fact to a quite insane degree and had never learned the subtle art of breaking news gently, a weird quirk for a man of the cloth. Dean had figured that was why folks around the run-down patch of city that was his flock liked him. They had hard lives and they didn’t need to hear about the Lord working in mysterious ways.
“Just…” Dean says, putting out a hand and dropping the cloth he’d been using. “Gimme a minute.”
He’s had dreams about this. Of course he has. Fanciful imaginings about a teary reunion because there were never any bodies found. For the first three or four years he’d been with Jim, Dean had pictured and re-pictured just how John Winchester would stride through those big double-doors at the front of the church, probably herding Sammy in front of him.
Sorry ‘bout that son, he’d say. No other explanation. Dean didn’t want to tarnish his fantasy with impossible details. He’d seen the photos, the Impala upside down and half-buried in mud. Big claw marks all along the body of it. John had only been going out to do some reconnaissance and teach little five year old Sammy tracking. Dean had for once been allowed to stay behind because there’d been a church picnic on the next day and he’d been helping Jim set up.
Then…
There’d been blood and some drag marks but nothing else. No evidence to say that either Winchester, big or small, had walked away from that clearing. Dean sees it in his nightmares sometimes, the wheels still spinning on the car and the rain falling, tree boughs hanging heavy with water.
He sees a tiny little pale hand jutting out from under the upturned car roof and he wakes screaming.
“What are you saying?” Dean asks, surprised at how shaky his voice sounds. So far as he knew, he was nine years old when he lost the rest of his family, the only person left to him in the whole world being Jim Murphy.
“How about we go grab a cup o’ Joe?” Jim proposes, gently removing the pot of wood polish Dean had been gripping in his other hand, so tightly he had to curl and uncurl his fingers a few times when he lets go to get the feeling back.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Dean says and it’s not a question.
It’s simple really, when Jim lays it all out. He’d come across a hunter while looking for a certain book to assist in a Redcap infestation and he’s heard a tale that had made his heart nearly stop. He’d visited a junkyard owned by a man named Bobby Singer and been served tea by a tall boy with shaggy hair who he’d had to look at twice because there was something familiar about him.
Jim had asked about the boy and had been told he was Bobby’s nephew. He’d accepted that at face value and had only pried loose the real story later when Bobby had relaxed around him and they’d both been working through translations, the boy coming in and out to help occasionally because Bobby had explained that he was a natural for the dead languages, like he’d been born in the wrong time.
Bobby, warily at first because the last thing he’d wanted was Family Services called down on him by a well-meaning preacher, had reared the boy from the age of five after finding him while hunting a particularly vicious pack of black dogs. He’d come upon an overturned Chevy and had found the boy wedged almost upside down in the foot well, like someone had shoved him there out of harm’s way.
No sign of the parents.
The little boy had been huge eyed and wary for the first few weeks Bobby had taken care of him, while sending out gentle inquiries to see if he could find the kid’s parents. He’d assumed, incorrectly Jim found, that the child had simply been a victim of misfortune, his Daddy running off the road on a particularly treacherous stretch. Having perhaps survived the accident, the hapless man had then fallen prey to creatures of darkest nightmare.
The only name Bobby had been able to get out of the boy after that first silent period had been Dean and so that’s what he’d been called for two months, right up until one morning during breakfast he’d corrected Bobby, finally stating emphatically that his name was in actual fact Sam and Dean was his big brother.
While Jim explains, he also adds a small lament to the fact that if John Winchester had actually been more involved in the wider hunting community instead of keeping mostly to himself, there would have been a chance Bobby would have recognised the family by their names and taken steps to track down survivors.
He hadn’t though, assuming Sam was a civilian but not willing to part with him after a time, fearful for Sam’s safety with a nice, normal foster family. He was fully aware once darkness found you, it had a way of happening on you again. The only place Sam would sleep behind salted windows and iron-inlaid doors was with Bobby.
Sam Singer is maybe six foot five and lean with shaggy hair falling over his eyes. Dean’s thinking, how is this my little brother as he watches Sam walk the warped planks out the front of Bobby’s house and stop at the top step leading down off the porch while he pulls up. He sees Sam startle a little when he notices Dean is driving an Impala, although he’s not sure if Sam would know it’s not the Impala.
Jim had let him buy a car when he was seventeen and Dean had been pretty adamant about what he’d wanted.
That little jerk of recognition is all Dean needs to believe this is his Sam but he understands Jim’s caution. The tale woven by Bobby makes it sound like it would be impossible for Sam to be anyone other than the Winchester they thought they’d lost but they’ve both met the kind of con-artists that could create this level of believability. Dean’s not really sure what anyone would hope to achieve by miraculously resurrecting a faux Sam but they have enemies and not just the demon kind.
Dean gets out of the car when he pulls up and waits on Jim to emerge from the passenger side. Three dogs, mangy looking mongrels but with an alertness to them that would tell anyone they were well-trained, seem to appear out of nowhere and place themselves between Dean, Jim and the house.
Dean knows these aren’t the kind of dogs you pat, probably the best sort of early-warning system since they can smell something unnatural from miles away. A fourth dog comes out of the house and stops by Sam’s side, his tail stilling and his ears going up when Sam lays a hand on his head.
“Uh, hi,” Dean greets and for an ice breaker, it’s pretty crap. Sam’s lips twitch a little and he rubs one of the dog’s ears between his thumb and forefinger but the mutt doesn’t take its eyes off the interlopers on its property.
“Hey,” Sam returns and then they both just kind of stare at each other, at a complete loss as to what to say next. Dean isn’t sure whether a hug is in order or a manly handshake. He’s seen family reunions on television and they’re always tear-filled wailing-fests. Dean figures Winchesters just aren’t the kind to tear at their faces and blubber but he also isn’t sure why they’re both being so… stilted.
The man who must be Bobby Singer appears behind Sam and lays a hand on his shoulder. This seems to break Sam out of some kind of paralysis because he thumps down the stairs but comes to a dead halt when he’s an arm’s length away. His fists clench at his sides like he’s not sure what to do with his hands. The dog has shadowed him down and now looks at him and whines, like its looking for a lead.
“You’re Dean?” Sam hazards and then rubs his hand over the back of his head, grinning wryly. “I mean… you’re Dean,” he repeats. “Man, I remember you being taller.”
“Yeah, well, I remember you being shorter,” Dean snorts and then they’re both just grinning at each other. Sammy had always had dimples deep enough to keep change in and it makes something warm break free in Dean’s chest to see them still on this bigger version. Jim clears his throat and Dean steps aside. “This is Pastor Jim,” he introduces even though they’ve already met and he grimaces because he remembers that as soon as he’s said it.
“How about you fellas come inside? I’m freezing my ba… er, bits off out here,” Bobby proposes and Dean gestures Jim to go in front of him, bringing up the rear of their small group. His eyes keep straying to Sam because maybe there’s some Sammy in there somewhere but it’s buried deep if there is.
Dean’s not sure what he was expecting. For Sam Singer to feel like a stranger wasn’t it though.
He watches Sam moving about his bedroom, sitting on Sam’s single bed with his back against the wall. There’re no posters up or any other teen crap. If anything Sam seems to be living more like a monk than Jim does. There’s spareness to his room. There’s a symbol painted on his ceiling that Dean wants to ask about but isn’t sure how. Maybe it’s the only sign of teenage rebellion… or some major magic mojo.
“This is…” Sam starts and then flails a little. He’s puttering around, wringing his hands in the bottom of his shirt. Stepping over the ever-present dog as he moves about the room. Dean hasn’t even gotten around to asking what it’s called.
“Pretty freakin’ weird,” Dean finishes for him and Sam nods. Dean wants to be thrilled by this turn of events but in the back of his mind he’s cautious. There’re so many questions he wants answered that they stick in his throat and he can’t get a single one out.
“Do you…” Sam begins to ask and then bites his lip. “Do you know what happened to our dad?”
Our dad. The words resonate in Dean’s mind. He got used to everything being in the singular ever since he lost everyone. To think someone else can lump themselves in with him is a little overwhelming after all this time.
Dean swallows hard and then shakes his head. “I thought you both died,” he admits and Sam winces.
“Bobby said I would’ve if he hadn’t been out hunting those damn things,” Sam explains, finally dropping to the single chair in the room, set in front of a makeshift desk which is just a long plank of wood fastened to the wall. It looks like maybe Sam made it himself, or Bobby. “You couldn’t see the overturned car from the road and the only reason the dogs didn’t find me was because it was pouring. Washed away my scent.”
“You must’a been terrified,” Dean encourages, because he wants to hear this. He desperately wants to hear everything. He’s missed a significant portion of his little brother’s life.
Dean stills because thinking that makes him realise that he’s pretty much resolved within himself that this is Sam Winchester, alive and whole before him.
“I don’t really remember much,” Sam says. “Just little things and not much from before it happened. Bobby reckons I blanked a lot because of the trauma, that maybe I might’ve even seen what happened to dad…” Sam shudders a little and puts a hand to his mouth, tugging at his bottom lip.
“I remember you, though,” Sam says, his voice sounding completely different. He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Not you specifically but I remember my brother Dean. He gave me airplane rides and the last of the Lucky Charms. He made pillow forts with me and was the biggest and toughest kid I knew or would ever know.”
Dean can feel a blush heating his cheeks and he ducks his head. He remembers a little kid dogging his footsteps, always asking for him first when he’d had a bad dream, even before their father. There was shaggy hair, big eyes and a killer puppy-dog look that got them free pie, guaranteed. Dean digs something out from his jacket pocket and holds it up.
It’s a small sneaker, ragged and worn, stained with flecks of mud.
“This is all Jim found,” Dean says, turning it over in his hands, running the loose end of the laces through his fingers.
“You kept that?”
“We eventually got rid of all your other clothes,” Dean says. “But I couldn’t… the knot’s still tied. It was the first time you’d done it all on your own. You were so damn proud. So damn little.” Dean chokes on the last word, ducks his head again and presses the sneaker hard against his forehead. He feels a hand, gentle and hesitant on his shoulder. Sam is leaning down, hair falling across his eyes.
“Sorry,” Dean says, taking a large gulp of air and grinding his knuckles into his eyes. He didn’t cry but his eyes feel gritty like it was a close thing.
“No, it’s fine,” Sam assures him, standing back up and wrapping his arms around his torso.
Sam’s out back feeding the dogs when Bobby sits down across from Dean and Jim, thumping a large tome into the middle of the table. He opens it and Dean can see an etching of the same symbol painted on Sam’s roof.
Heavy-duty magic mojo it is then.
“I figured you’d ask,” Bobby says, looking at Dean and he throws a glance at Jim and sees the older man raise his eyebrows.
“A Devil’s Trap?” Dean prods when he leans forward and has a look at just what the symbol is. He’s heard of them in passing but he’s never seen one used as a defence in quite such a way. “Is Sam’s bedroom supposed to be like a panic room?”
“Kinda,” Bobby says and his gaze shifts away. Dean is acutely aware that he’s holding something back but he understands. They’re still pretty much strangers and Bobby has as little reason to trust him and Jim as they do. “We were having some problems with Sam having… dreams,” Bobby continues. “Normal dream catchers just weren’t cutting it.”
From the way he says it, Dean’s pretty sure Bobby’s not talking about the normal teenage boy dreams that result in embarrassed slinks to the laundry room late at night.
“What kind of dreams?” Jim asks and Dean’s grateful that he’s not the only one whose inner warning-bells went off immediately. Hunters are a superstitious lot and most, through a veil of grief and anger, can only see in black and white when it comes to anything out of the ordinary.
Bobby seems to come to a decision because he takes a deep breath, casts a wary eye at the back door where Sam will emerge when he’s done, then says, “He’d have nightmares. Bad ones.”
“You think maybe a demon’s stalking him in his sleep or something?” Dean asks, confused. Bobby shakes his head.
“No, I don’t think you get it. He knows what the symbol in his room is but he thinks it’s for his protection.”
Dean suddenly feels cold all over. He can picture Sam’s bedroom in his mind’s eye clearly. He can see the Devil’s Trap and where it’s positioned.
Right above Sam’s bed.
“Things shift around. The window’s broken a half dozen times. Sometimes… sometimes he dreams things that haven’t happened yet.”
“You’re not worried about something getting in,” Dean breathes, palms pressing down against the table hard. “You’re worried about something getting out.”
“I love that boy with everything in me,” Bobby says, staring hard at both Jim and Dean. “But I deal with possessions mostly, lost my Annabelle that way and there’s something…” Bobby makes a helpless gesture with his hand, before tugging on the bill of his cap to bring it down lower over his eyes. “All your new age-y hippie types would try and tell you that… abilities like Sam seems to be developing are just natural evolution of humans. I’m sorry I can’t live in that world where this is a good sign.”
“It’s not necessarily a bad sign either,” Jim ventures. “There’s a lot still outside our understanding.
“You’d better not be tryin’ to lead me down the God has a plan path because I’m damn sure he didn’t plan on my Annabelle gouging her eyes out with her own thumbs because something black and nasty was wearing her like a cheap suit,” Bobby almost growls.
“I’m not trying to start anything like that,” Jim says, holding his hands up, palms out. “In my lifetime I’ve seen a lot more evidence of the damned than the divine, more’s the pity.”
“Sorry Pastor,” Bobby says although it sounds like his heart isn’t in the apology. “There are those that see tragedy as a way to salvation. I ain’t one of them.”
“What do you think is happening?” Dean asks in a small voice. It’s been his life up to now, forever cursed. Finding his brother miraculously alive after all this time seemed too good to be true and now, apparently it’s pretty evident it was.
“I can’t say for sure but what I do know is that I’ll stand between that boy and hell if it kills me.”
“Is everything okay?” Sam’s voice is quiet and a little nervous from the doorway. He’s got snow on his shoulders and in his hair and he tugs a scarf down from over his nose and mouth as he enters the room.
“Just fine, kiddo,” Bobby assures him, closing the book with a snap.
Part Two
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