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Fic: "Dorsum ad Dorsum" - Then
“Single please, two queens if you have it.”
The clerk peers over his glasses at Dean and raises his eyebrows. “That your credit card?” he asks incredulously, one eyebrow raised.
“Nope,” Dean dismisses, rolling his eyes. “It’s m’Dad’s. He’s out in the car.” Dean hikes a finger over his shoulder and the clerk leans sideways. Dean just stands with his eyes forward, hoping that his dad hasn’t slumped down and is actually still visible. He was hell to drag into the driver’s seat and it will all be for nothing if this guy can’t see him outside the yellowed window.
“Gotta sign,” the clerk says, tapping the open ledger in front of him.
“Can he do it in the morning if I pay cash?” Dean asks. “Only, the car was making this hitching noise and dad doesn’t want to kill the engine in case it doesn’t start up again. We didn’t want to block your driveway and-”
“Yeah, alright, fine,” the clerk dismisses, snapping his fingers for the wad of bills Dean digs out of his pocket. He’s already looking back at the book he was reading and that’s good.
That’s very good.
He doesn’t want the guy to see him shoving his dead drunk dad back over the bench seat and getting in behind the wheel himself.
Considering he’s all of fourteen, that might be a little harder to explain.
Dean emerges from the office with the key and sees John has managed to rouse himself, sitting up with his hands gripping the wheel and blinking blearily out of the windshield.
“Did I drive here?” John asks when Dean pulls the door open.
“Yeah dad, with your eyes closed,” Dean snorts and prods at his father, careful of his healing ribs, mindful of John having been thrown by a black dog the day before. His dad swore he’d only cracked one but Dean had heard it all before and it was more likely that John had a break and just didn’t want to worry him.
John starts sliding across the seat but pauses halfway, turning his head enough to actually focus on Dean.
“You got a license?”
“Yeah, ‘course I do,” Dean says, digging his wallet out of his pocket and opening it, holding the empty leather in front of his father’s eyes. “See?”
“Okay, alright then,” John says agreeably and shifts the rest of the way over, dropping his head on the passenger side window and starting to snore almost immediately.
Just great, Dean thinks. Going to have to actually carry his heavy ass into the room.
He’s half-tempted to leave John to sleep it off in the car. He’s done it before but it’s snowing out and he doesn’t hate his dad quite that much yet. He’s sure he’ll get there eventually if they keep on going the way they’re going, but not today.
When he pulls around to the room, John shifts back into consciousness. “You’re a good kid,” his dad says as Dean tries to get a shoulder under his dad’s armpit so he can lever him out of the car.
“You’re going to have to help me out here or we’re both gonna freeze our balls off,” Dean says by way of response and then groans when John’s help almost tips them into a snowdrift next to the passenger side door. “Fuck you’re a heavy bastard.”
“Don’t curse,” John says and waves his hand about for a second. Dean assumes John was aiming a smack to the back of his head. He says “Ow,” dutifully and John stops the flailing which had been threatening to tip them on their asses again.
“How about we make a deal?” Dean offers as he half carries, half drags his father towards their motel room. His dad luckily does have his feet under him two out of three steps otherwise Dean really wouldn’t be able to get him to the room. He’s maybe half his dad’s size and exhausted on top of that. He’d had to drive two hours to find a motel sleazy and abandoned enough for him to actually drive in without someone calling the cops. “I’ll stop cursing if you stop drinking every time one of these leads doesn’t pan out.”
Dean supposes he should count himself lucky. His dad is a heavy drinker when the mood takes him, but the mood doesn’t take him often. Usually he’s a beacon of focus and sobriety, driven like no one else Dean’s ever encountered.
Then there are the off-times, those few days when he feels like he was getting close, only for everything to fall apart. Dead end or wild goose chase, he takes both equally badly and equally whiskey-soaked.
Dean gets them inside the room without further incident and actually manages to dump his dad on the bed closest to the door rather than the floor like he’d been tempted to. What he’s not expecting is for his dad to come up off the bed right after that, yanking a gun Dean didn’t realize he had on him out of the back of his jeans and aiming it at Dean’s face.
“What have you done with them?” his dad demands and Dean freezes, knowing the quickest way for this to end badly is to startle his father into action. He’s not deluded enough to think that even a bad drunk will completely ruin John Winchester’s aim.
“Dad, it’s me.” Dean says slowly, carefully putting his hands up and out to show he’s in no way armed. His dad squints at him for a moment before his gun-hand thankfully lowers, although not all the way.
“Who’re you again?”
“Dean. I’m your son,” Dean repeats and as he lowers his hands his dad’s also drop until the gun is hanging listlessly from his fingers.
“Why can’t I find them? What am I supposed to do?” his dad asks, sounding so broken that Dean winces. His dad goes to drop onto the edge of the bed but he misjudges and lands on his ass on the burnt orange carpet instead. It doesn’t seem to register though, because all his dad does is drop his head into his hands and start to cry.
“Dad, hey, you gotta pull it together,” Dean pleads, dropping down onto his knees by his father and prying to gun loose from his hand. “I just… I’m a kid. I shouldn’t be doing this.”
His dad looks up, cheeks wet and eyes surprisingly clear. “I know hon, I know,” he says, getting a hand up and onto Dean’s shoulder. “How about we find a place to stay? I’ll get a job and you can go to school.”
“Sure, dad,” Dean sighs, urging his father up and back onto the bed. His dad is out for good this time before his head hits the pillow.
Dean would like to believe that in the morning his dad and he would pack up, pick a town off a map they buy at a gas station and get a little place. They would stop hunting the mother who abandoned them and hell, all the evil things that end up being almost a by-product of their hunt, stuff of nightmares that a kid of Dean’s age shouldn’t have to deal with. His dad could open a garage and Dean could actually go to school instead of learning by correspondence from Pastor Jim. He may have to start a few grades lower and be the humiliatingly big kid in class because the whole correspondence thing is spotty at best but he could deal with that.
On Sundays his dad could BBQ and knock back enough beers to make him laugh that loud chest rattler that he does when he’s in the mood. Pastor Jim could come and stay with them and Dean could cook something that wasn’t out of a can or 7-11 microwave. He could maybe play baseball, get a pretty girl and put together his own classic car, just like his dad did.
Dean shakes himself out of his fantasy because he knows what they’ll actually be doing in the morning.
Getting on the road, just like always.
Mary dreams of fire.
The dreams are infrequent, seven years gone and she doesn’t think they will ever stop particularly, but they’re less now and that’s good enough for her. What worries Mary the most is that Sammy is always restless when she has a particularly bad one.
Makes her think horrible things in the dead of night, like maybe the world would be better off if she buried him in a foster home somewhere, hopefully never to learn of his true potential.
“Mom?” Sammy’s in the doorway of her room. It’s a rare thing for them to have a place big enough for Sammy to have his own bed and he’s having trouble with the concept. He’s like a human space heater and an octopus during the night, takes up a larger amount of space than he should, being so small for his age. He’s got a worn teddy by the ear dangling from one hand and Mary wonders absently where he got it from because she certainly doesn’t buy him toys.
Seems strangers are always taking it upon themselves to give him things.
Mary quickly tucks the photo she’d been holding into the sleeve of the shirt she’s using for a nightgown. She knows she should just throw it out or better yet burn it because then she wouldn’t be able to change her mind later and dig it out again, like she’s done so many times. She can’t help it though, tracing the lines of her former family.
Dean will be eleven years old today, most likely growing like a weed and hating the mother who abandoned him, or worse, not thinking of her at all.
“Why do I have to sleep in by myself? I don’t like it,” Sammy says, taking a tentative step into the room and Mary holds up her hand. She’s both heartened and horrified to see him still automatically, more obedient than a child his age ever should be.
See, she wants nothing more than to scoop up the little boy in the ragged pajama pants with a hole in the knee into her arms. In the dead of night she wants a lot of things that she knows she can’t have if she’s going to put things right.
One stupid, impulsive decision and she damned them all.
“What is it about your room that you don’t like, specifically?” she asks instead, prompting Sammy to use logic. She sees him pause, bite his lip for a second and bring the bear up to rub under his chin. One of the button eyes is missing and she knows she should take the teddy away from him but she can’t quite bring herself to do it.
Just one night, she tells herself. He can have it for just one night.
“It’s… scary,” Sammy tries, voice going small and a little wobbly. Now the teddy travels up so she can only see his eyes over its ears.
“I’ve warded the room, Sam,” she says, injecting impatience into her tone. “Nothing can get in.”
“I know, but-”
“Sam, nothing can get in so there is no reason for you to be scared.”
“I…,” she sees him pause, knowing that he is at an impasse without probably any real kind of understanding of what that is. “Okay.”
There’s the soft sound of Sam running on tiny feet back to his own room and then the tired squeak of the bed as he jumps on. She’d picked up the old box spring from the side of the road, put out for the collection day and she’s expecting it to collapse every time Sammy shifts on it but it stays resolutely together, defying all reason, much like most things in her life.
Mary pulls the photo out again when a few minutes have passed and she’s relatively sure Sammy won’t make another appearance. She traces again the faces in the picture of her husband and then four-year-old son, baby cradled in her arms. She puts her fingers to the top edge and means to rip it into halves; quarters and then eighths but she can’t do it.
This is all she has left of them, one quickly fading photograph.
“Goodnight my boys,” she sighs to the darkness and lays down, pulling the blankets over her body, kidding herself that the coldness she feels is because the house has more holes in the walls than a sieve.
“He’s gorgeous. How old is he?”
Mary looks up from her son and smiles at the woman addressing her. She thinks the woman introduced herself when she’d first arrived as Renee or Rose, something old-fashioned like that.
Mary looks back to Sammy, industriously working on the tiny bits from the well-used coloring books that are left. Most other kids basically scribbled over the large rabbit or frolicking puppy in the foreground but her Sammy carefully fills in the grass at their feet, the happy daisies with smiling faces and the birds in the sky.
He never colors outside the lines.
They’re currently staying in a battered women’s shelter that Mary had found a flyer for in a bus station. She feels a pang of guilt about taking a spot that someone might need more than her but she’d been down to her last five dollars and when it was either this or have Sammy go hungry, she chose this.
The old pain in her eyes helps support her stories that she spins for the people that run the place. She doesn’t know exactly what they see when they look at her but it must be bad enough because their doors are always open to her. She doesn’t have to say much and they don’t ask many questions, just push more flyers at her and sometimes a religious circular. She thanks them profusely and swears that this time she’ll leave the bastard and she knows they’re never surprised when she disappears.
“Thank you,” she answers, never really knowing what to say when someone compliments her child. “Five.” She knows she had something to do with making him but she can’t really take credit as such. He has a squashy little nose, moles and deep dimples when he grins wide that make people want to do whatever he wants.
She sometimes wonders how much of him is her, how much is John and how much…
Mary swallows hard and smiles. The woman is doing nothing but smiling pleasantly, holding a cup of coffee just under her breast and yet something about her suddenly and almost inexplicably makes Mary nervous.
“I’m sorry, what was your name again?” Mary asks, holding a hand out, careful to make it the opposite one to the one the woman is holding her beverage in. She hates when people see her very obviously holding something and still jut out the wrong hand.
The woman takes her hand, still smiling, and the expression almost bland.
“I’m Ruby.”
Being Deanna and Samuel Campbell’s daughter through and through, and rightfully paranoid, Mary manages to sneak Ruby holy water within the first ten minutes of their meeting.
Sam is still coloring but looks at them when Ruby’s spitting up smoke and holy-water-spiked orange juice in equal measure.
“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas-,”
“Wait!” Ruby says, putting up a hand as if warding off a blow. Mary does pause, but only because she realizes belatedly that Sam is between them, equal distance from both herself and the demon standing in front of her. Ruby keeps her eyes on Mary and Mary suspects this may be on purpose, Ruby is some way proving she’s not a threat by not automatically going for her son.
She might be able to exorcise the demon, but not before Sammy would die.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Ruby continues, hand still up but palm turned out now, as if imploring Mary to understand that she’s harmless and unarmed. Demons are never either but it’s also a good idea to understand just what their motivations are because if there’s one, there’s likely to be others.
Mary needs to know if she’s being followed, if she’s on some kind of a demonic hit list.
“You make a habit of trolling battered women’s shelters?”” Mary asks warily. She wants to retrieve Sammy from the floor, who is now looking up at both of them with a kind of puzzled concern. She aches to send him away from the room, far away from the demon but she also wants to be able to see him. Indecision freezes her.
She’s been scared before. Growing up knowing the things that went bump in the night could actually kill you if they were inclined made for some interesting nightmares but Mary has never been truly terrified. The fear she feels for something so small and defenseless, despite her growing unease surrounding her son’s very existence, staggers her.
“Please, give me some credit,” Ruby snorts. “I’m not some sleazy dealmaker.”
“What are you then?”
Ruby gestures sideways, probably asking permission to sit and most likely understanding that the move actually shifts her further from Sammy and Mary nods, slight up and down of her chin only. “Maybe the best way to describe me is kind of like a pilot fish. I hang around the big bads, picking up on their leftovers.”
“A scavenger?”
Ruby glances at her nails, pulling a jagged piece free from her index finger and flicking it aside. “If you must be so base, yes. It’s dangerous to be that close to the heavyweights but every now and then you learn something before everyone else does that makes the danger worthwhile.”
“And that would be?”
Ruby snorts indelicately and eyes Mary for a moment. She blinks, her eyes flooding black for the barest of seconds and Mary flinches. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“I’ve heard some pretty crazy things in my time. Try me,” Mary invites. Sammy scoots across the floor on his knees, having lost interest in Mary and Ruby’s conversation and he heads for a plastic bucket filled with toy cars. Mary doesn’t stop him because he’s now solidly across the room from Ruby and closer still to her, almost within arm’s reach and she starts breathing just the tiniest bit easier. Mary jumps a little when Sammy tips the bucket upside down, the cars rolling across the floor in all directions, one industrious little red convertible only stopping when it bumps against one of Ruby’s shoes.
“Sammy!” Mary snaps automatically. He tilts his head in her direction and squinches up his face, his apology face she’s been calling it mentally since before he could talk. She waves a hand at him and he starts putting the cars back in the bucket, setting aside a few favorites that he obviously means to run around the room.
“It’s about your son, actually,” Ruby says and Mary’s gaze snaps back to her, eyes narrowed. Ruby is looking at Sammy now, something interested and disturbingly hungry in her face and Mary half-rises but Ruby’s eyes cut back to her. “He scares you, doesn’t he?”
“What do you know?” Mary demands, lowering back onto the couch. Sammy is humming to himself and if Mary weren’t facing off with a demon, she might laugh because Sammy is humming the last thing they heard on the radio on the bus on the way in.
Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones.
“He’s known as the Lantern by the more devout, Lightbringer by the ones that think they’re funny.”
“Why is that funny?” Mary asks.
“It’s not really. It was just the nickname of someone…else.”
Mary shivers.
“When the world folds over and hell is left, your boy will remain. He will keep you alive, keep rot from food and bacteria from water. He will keep the lights on and the positivity flowing although you won’t thank him for the nightmares he’ll share when you sleep. However, be away from him and the despair just pushing at the edges will find a way in. It’ll creep in the cracks and lay you open for any opportunistic bastard without a body. The humans left will be ponies, ridden hard and tossed aside, the unluckier ones still alive.”
“Are you talking about the apocalypse?” Mary asks incredulously. The way her father used to tell it, every demon had a different version of the end of the world, always more than willing to share their vision if they were about to be evicted from the body they were currently inhabiting. They all had a master plan, or knew someone with a master plan and the recurring theme was that humans would be left to die, screaming.
Mary learned to take these claims with a grain of salt.
“Look, if nothing else, the very fact that I’m the first one here should tell you the enormity of what your son represents. The higher ups, or well, lower downs,” Ruby corrects, grinning wolfishly, “are dithering about what to do with him.”
Mary does retrieve Sammy now, her son still clutching a small fire truck to his chest. She reels him into her arms and feels the soft brush of his hair under her chin. “Wee-uh, wee-uh!” Sammy supplies the siren noise as he makes the fire truck zoom through the air like a plane.
“Why are you here?” Mary asks slowly.
“I want to help you, or well, more specifically him,” Ruby says, motioning at the small boy in her arms. “I’ll get him to realize his full… potential.”
“Why should I believe you?” Mary says.
“Don’t, not right now anyway. I don’t expect you to. As soon as I go you’ll convince yourself that you’re crazy for even listening to a demon for this long.” Ruby stands and walks towards the door. She turns back when she reaches it, tapping her nails on the lintel for a moment. “Might I suggest though you find another couple of hunters to hang out with for a while. The hordes are coming and they won’t be as sweet as me. I’ll be back when you’re ready for me.”
Ruby’s eyes skip to Sammy. “When he’s ready for me.”
“This is what’s best, Dean.”
Dean Winchester is watching his little brother being bundled into the back of a large blue car.
“Can I come with you?” Dean asks as Sammy emerges in the back window of the car, obviously up on his knees. He presses palms against the glass and his eyes are large and worried. He hasn’t cried, neither of them have because what their dad says is the law and right and he says big boys don’t cry but Dean can’t shake the feeling of wrong no matter how much he trusts his father.
“No hon,” Mary says, putting a hand to the top of Dean’s head and rubbing back and forth until the hair sticks up in spikes. “Sammy and I have to go away but your father will be back soon. Go back to the room and lock the door until he comes.”
Just as the car starts up and pulls away, Dean realizes he can’t just let this happen. “No!” he screams and darts forward. As if Dean’s movement shatters the weird shell of calm that has surrounded them both, Sammy starts thumping on the back window of the car at the same time, his cries not able to be heard but his mouth shaping all too clearly his big brother’s name.
His mom has taken Sammy on hundreds of errands by themselves before but Dean knows, deep down in his gut, that this time there’s something different.
Later John will scream and throw things and scare Dean badly. He’ll take Dean by his shoulders and shake him hard enough for Dean to feel his teeth rattle.
Tell me where she went, she must have said something, his father will repeat over and over again, sometimes whispering it and sometimes yelling. He’ll pack their belongings in a flurry of movement and they’ll hit all the contacts they’ve made over the years as they range outwards. No one will have seen Mary or know where she’s gone.
What’s worse, what Dean will realize later through a filter of years is that none of them sound particularly surprised that she’s gone. What they are all surprised by is the fact that she just didn’t up and disappear by herself one day, instead took one of the boys with her.
“Bet you can’t hit it with one shot.”
Dean raises his head and squints in the direction of Sarah Bailey who holds her longbow loosely in hand and is shifting dreamily from foot to foot. Her gaze is trained on the target line at the end of the field and the lone can sitting on top of one of the round targets pocked with holes, probably forgotten as Theo or Sophia pulled arrows after practice. It’s late afternoon, sun dipping low on the horizon and lessons are done for the day.
Sammy is rolling along in the grass on his side, arms held up straight above his head so he looks like a log with elbows and knees. Dean watches him for a moment, knowing he’s going to be itching like a monkey later on because he’s allergic to grass, the freak and then turns back to Sophia.
“What’cha got?” he asks, slinging his rifle off his shoulder and sighting the can down its length. Dean usually keeps mostly to himself, only talking to Sammy or, if it’s absolutely necessary, one of the other hunters or the older kids, Theo and Sophia. Usually interactions with them are made up of yes, no and pass the butter. Sarah has earned the honor of being talked to by knocking two of Billy Keeton’s teeth out with one fairly spectacular left hook when he’d pushed Sammy off his chair at dinner.
It helped that Sarah doesn’t giggle behind her hands whenever she’s around him like some of the other girls. She’s older by six years at thirteen, lean and hard like a boy with sun-roughened skin and bright red hair that she keeps tamed under a bandana. Dean doesn’t know whose daughter she is or even if she is one anymore, or merely a niece or a granddaughter.
His daddy says never to ask people about their past or what brought them here, only let them volunteer the information if they were inclined.
Sammy comes to a halt when he fetches up against Sarah’s legs and she digs her bare toes into his ribs, making him curl and giggle. “I snuck a jar of Charlie’s moonshine. I’ll let you have half,” Sarah offers. Dean doesn’t know a lot about moonshine, other than the kids weren’t allowed it so it’s too tempting an offer to pass up.
Dean snugs the rifle into his shoulder, narrows his eyes and takes the shot. The crack echoes through the quiet and the can skips off the top of the target in a high arc over the back fence and disappears into the undergrowth.
Sammy jumps to his feet and raises his arms in victory, Dean grinning and ducking his head. Sarah snorts, feigning boredom but her lips are quirked up. “Fine,” she grunts. “Didn’t want the whole lot anyway. Apparently you chuck your guts up for days if you have too much.”
“Nice shot.”
Dean and Sarah spin, Dean automatically reaching out for Sammy who crosses to and then behind him. There is an adult standing off to the right Dean hasn’t seen before, which means he’s come from outside. Sarah relaxes marginally when she spots the man so Dean does too, keeping a wary eye on him.
“Hi Mr. Meehan,” Sarah greets, shoulders going back and chin rising. Meehan is looking at Dean with something speculative on his face and it makes Dean fidget in place, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. When he nods and turns, heading back to the house, Sarah sighs and crosses her arms, cocking her head at Dean.
“Hey, maybe he’ll take you too,” she said and Dean frowned at her.
“Take me where?”
“I’m going to be his boot since Grandpa can’t really see so well anymore. When you’re old enough he might take you on too.”
“How can you be someone’s boots?” Sammy asks, looking between Dean and Sarah with puzzlement plain on his features.
“A boot’s like an apprentice, a trainee hunter,” Sarah explains. “If Mr. Meehan likes Dean, he’ll take him out into the Wasteland to train.”
“No one’s takin’ Dean!” Sammy exclaims, eyes widening in horror. Dean cuts a pissed off glance at Sarah and hooks Sammy’s head with an arm, reeling his brother in so his face is pressed to Dean’s sternum.
“I’m not going anywhere without you, dumbass,” Dean says as Sammy hooks hands into the bottom of Dean’s t-shirt and lets out a watery sounding breath. “Sarah’s just being a bitch because I won the bet.”
“Hey!” Sarah snaps, smacking Dean on the shoulder.
“Our Dad and Mom will teach us everything. They’re better than your Mister Meehan any day of the week.”
“Your parents are always screaming at each other. I thought you’d be happy for a chance to be out of that.”
“Shut up,” Dean grits, towing Sammy back towards the house. He rounds the house to the front porch but freezes right before they’re out of the shadow of the house. His mom and dad are walking up the stairs and Mister Meehan is in front of them, hand on the shoulder of an older lady with a shock of white hair and blue eyes almost light enough that at first glance, it looks like she has nothing but white. Sammy starts to make a noise but Dean claps a hand over his mouth and pulls him further back.
His father rubs a hand over his face, his mother settling in a chair next to him and opposite Meehan. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
“We’re losing out there Winchester,” Meehan grinds out, rubbing a hand across the bristle at his jaw. He’s a heavy-set man, but everything’s solid. He’s the kind of man whose muscle would turn to fat if he ever stopped but he’s coming up on fifty and it doesn’t look likely. “You said yerself the stuff he dreams comes true, that sometimes you find jobs that way.”
Dean bites at his lip and looks back at his brother, held in pretty much an awkward headlock. Sammy’s eyes are wide and a little annoyed. Dean releases him and pushes him towards the small grouping of grubby children behind the house. Sammy goes, wiping underneath his nose with a sleeve.
“He’s just a kid,” his father continues, trying to ignore the way his mother is staring a hole into his ear.
“John, that’s just it. He can’t really understand what he’s seeing yet but still the stuff he tells us…”
“Look, it ain’t the same as when I first started hunting. Demons are slithering up from hell in physical form. We’re less book and bell, more sword and shell and you’re still relying’ on teachin’ ‘em goddamn incantations that don’t mean squat no more.” Meehan says, waving an apologetic hand after interrupting Mary.
“You watch yourself now,” his father warns, laying his hands flat on the arms of his chair.
“John,” his mother says, settling one of her hands on the arm of his chair over one of his clenched hands. “This might be our only chance to find… him. If Elsbeth can teach him to focus, to be able to use what he has… his gift. Starting this young, who knows what he could-”
“It’s not a gift,” John snarls. “He’ll… grow out of this nonsense. They’re just nightmares. Night terrors. I’ve read about them and they’re normal.”
“John, we need… I need-”
“Mary, we’re not having this argument again, goddamit,” John rages and stands. “You don’t know that this has anything to do with… you don’t know what this means for him.”
“Mr. Winchester,” the woman Dean assumes to be Elsbeth pipes up. “You have to understand.”
John holds a hand up, face calm but expression dark. “No one’s turning my son into some freak just so they can use him as some kind of demon radar.” His dad turns and points a finger at his mom. “Not even you.”
“This isn’t up for debate,” his mother says, sounding apologetic but firm. “Sammy can help me find the thing that killed my parents. That killed-” His mother cuts off, eyes going wide. Her expression is the same as when she almost says swears in front of him and catches herself in time. “That nearly killed all of us.”
“Sometimes,” his dad says through clenched teeth. “I don’t think I even know you anymore.”
His father leaves the porch then, striding off towards the road and the car. In a few moments there’s the loud burst of the engine starting up under protest. His mother slams back into the house and Meehan shrugs and goes in after her.
Leaving Elsbeth on the porch alone.
“You can come out now,” she says in a gentle tone. Dean emerges, dragging toes in the dust and puts his hands on the porch boards, at waist height.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“I know a lot of things,” Elsbeth says, giving him a strange smile and tapping her temple.
“Something happened,” John says, gripping the wheel hard. “I need… I need to know what happened.”
John had said those words two hours ago and now as they pull up to a ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere, Mary finally turns back to him. Sammy burbles from the backseat and Dean, slumped forward in sleep, shifts until he is pressed against Sammy’s car seat. John sees in the rear-vision mirror that Sammy is awake and watching them, quiet and dark-eyed. He has one fist curled in the mess of Dean’s hair but he’s not tugging, merely holding on.
“I can’t really… explain it,” Mary says. “You’ll have to see.”
“Where are we anyway?” John asks, leaning forward to look at the house. Lights come on just as his eyes are adjusting to the darkness, temporarily blinding him again. The silhouette of a man appears on the porch and the man’s holding something. John can’t exactly make it out in the glare from the house but he could swear it was a shotgun.
“Jefferson Wilkes is an old friend of my parent’s. We’ll be safe here.”
“Safe?” John barks. “From what exactly?”
“John,” Mary says, her face drawn, eyes almost hollow in the shadows thrown back from the house. “I have to ask you to trust me, just on this one thing. I’ll explain everything but it will take time and possibly bourbon. Right now, I need you and the boys safe. I can’t think about anything else.”
John blinks at his wife. Mary was always softly spoken and generous to a fault. She was caring and funny and sexy. The fine thread of authority under her tone now makes him automatically go to follow her instruction, bone-deep drive to obey written into his body by the Marine Corps. Mary still looks like the woman he fell in love with but he’s never heard her like this.
He wants to trust her but uneasiness sinks its talons deep into his gut.
He knows Mary sings old Gilbert and Sullivan in the shower and eats cookies in bed. He knows he’s never seen her truly natural hair color and that she laughs, this strange hysterical hiccup of noise right before she cries. She’s creative in bed and can make him blush in public.
He knows all this but he’s starting to get the very horrible feeling that while he knows his wife, he doesn’t know this woman at all.
Before he can protest, Mary is out of the car and holding her hands up. “Jefferson, it’s just me you maniac. Mary Campbell!” she calls and John winces when she uses her maiden name. It only lets his unease get real purchase on him. “Put down the gun.”
“Mary?” the man calls from the porch, shielding his eyes and hunkering so John knows he’s squinting into the darkness. “Who’s that with you?”
“My family,” Mary calls back. “Let us up to the house.”
Jefferson turns out to be a small man with watery blue eyes and a shock of white hair. He moves like he has arthritis but is used to forcing himself through the pain. His house is neat as a pin and normal which John wasn’t exactly expecting with the reception they received but John’s relief is short-lived when the man ushers them to a door that must lead down to a basement.
“That fire in Lawrence you?” Jefferson asks gruffly, herding Mary, John and a mostly still asleep Dean down the stairs. John has Sammy tucked into the crook of one arm and Sammy’s alert as he was in the car, looking around at everything, not making a peep.
“How’d you know that?” Mary asks, looking back at John once at the bottom of the stairs. He doesn’t understand her grimace until he gets a load of the space they’ve just stepped into. The words crazy survivalist come to mind when he sees the symbols chalked exposed brick, the shelves lining three walls fairly bulging with water bottles and canned goods. There’s a ratty couch in the middle of the room and Dean makes a beeline for it but John catches his shoulder and reels him back against his legs.
“Samuel asked me to keep tabs if anything ever happened to him so I been keepin’ tabs,” Jefferson says with a shrug. “Frankly, I’ve been waiting for something like this ever since you went civilian.”
“Anybody want to tell me just what the fuck is going on?” John demands. Dean tilts his face up, mouth hanging open.
“Daddy, that’s one of the bad swears!” he exclaims, looking comically shocked and if John wasn’t currently standing in some insane man’s basement of horrors, he might’ve laughed. Dean’s expression then pulls down. “The swear jar got burned up,” he says and he sounds so mortified about it that John immediately digs into his robe, Christ, he’s still in his pajamas, and miracle of miracles, comes up with a crumpled dollar bill. He remembers tucking it there only four hours earlier because Dean had lost a tooth that same day and he was meaning to slip it under his son’s pillow.
“You keep it safe until we get a new one,” he says and Dean takes the dollar and presses it to his chest.
Jefferson and Mary are both staring at him when he raises his head and he sighs.
“Start talking.”
- Now - (Part 1) -
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Mary using battered women's shelters and being believable as a battered wife; Ruby keeping an eye on Sam; John realising that while he knows Mary Winchester intimately, he has no idea about Mary Campbell (and Mary almost letting out that John died too!); the separation of the boys and how wrong that was.
But most of all the absolute tragedy of Dean not having his Sammy and Sam not having his Dean. Dean may have John and Sam may have Mary, but Dean was more of a mother to Sam than Mary can let herself be and this John is much worse than the John whose wife was killed - because this John's wife left voluntarily and took one of his sons with her.
The boys need each other more than they need their parents. Even if they each have a parent they don't have what's most important.
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