Bonds of Trust 5/5
Title: Bonds of Trust 5/5
Author: Ada
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst, Action
Spoilers: Mild for AHBL and BDABR
Characters: John, Jim, Bobby, Daniel Elkins, wee!Sam, wee!Dean, OCs, no pairings
Disclaimer: I owe too much money to student loan companies to buy Supernatural.
Summary: Preseries. When the boys go missing, salt lines intact and barely any trail to follow, Jim brings a group of hunters together to find them. Unfortunately hunters do not always see eye to eye and John is forced to recognize that hunters can be just as dangerous as their prey.
Previous chapters: One, Two, Three, Four-A, Four-B
Bonds of Trust
By: Ada C. Eliana
Chapter 5
Sam did not seem to really understand what had happened in the woods. When John questioned him about it, it appeared that there were many parts he didn’t even remember, such as the times the demon bitch touched him and made him look at her. He continually referred to the demon as ‘the bad lady’ and Tim as ‘the bad man’. He was confused as to why ‘the good lady’ (Teresa) was drawing circles on the ground with salt, but he said he knew it was important to her and that’s why he helped her with it. All in all he seemed to believe the demon was just a bad person, and that in the end his daddy had saved them and that was all that mattered. John was relieved, he wanted to avoid the ‘monsters are real’ discussion with Sam for as long as he possibly could.
When they escaped the forest, John had put Teresa in Jim’s car and Bobby had gone with them to the hospital. John had taken the boys back to Jim’s house, cleaned them up, looked them over, bandaged the burns on Sam’s arms, and then put them to bed. Luckily the burns on Sam’s skin were not too serious, and seemed to have begun fading as soon as the demon was exorcised. Both boys were exhausted and would sleep well through the night.
However, Dean was troubled. He asked John again and again why the man had tried to sacrifice them to the demon. John tried to explain, but in the end, all he could answer with was a resounding ‘I don’t know,’ and that bothered him more than any other explanation.
John remembered Tim citing Teresa as knowing why he had done what he did, and he felt nervous about confronting her. Whatever Tim’s reasons, most likely delusional ones, Teresa had saved his sons’ lives, and that meant he owed her more than he had ever owed anyone in his life. Not to mention that according to the phone call from Bobby at 2am, Teresa had been sent into surgery to remove the bullet from her back, and initial scans were showing nerve damage to her left side.
Daniel and Joshua had returned to Jim’s at the same time as John. Upon hearing that Teresa had been taken into surgery, both had headed to the hospital, leaving John alone in the quiet house with the sound of his sons’ breathing and his thoughts.
He continually replayed the scene with Tim over and over in his mind, Tim’s distraction, him firing his gun at the boys, John aiming his own gun and firing.
Firing over and over again.
Three shots, all dead on, all causing the death of another hunter, another person. John had killed before, it was hard to survive Vietnam without some blood on your hands, but never like that. Never before had he stood so close and fired with such maliciousness.
John had not seen Tim’s eyes as he died, that moment went to Teresa who had been on the other side, but all the same he could imagine them, imagine what it was like to watch it. He had seen the pain and fear in Mary’s eyes as she died, he could imagine what kind of a surprise Tim had felt, mowed down like that.
Not that Tim hadn’t deserved to die. He had tried to kill Sammy and Dean. But that bothered John the most, he wished he knew why Tim had done it, why he had kidnapped his boys and tried to sacrifice them. It made no sense to John. Tim was a hunter, a good one if the stories John heard were true. He was in the photo on Jim’s mantle, a group of hunters at a 4th of July barbeque, the smiling faces of Tim, Joshua, Daniel, Teresa, Bobby, Caleb, Jefferson, some people John would never meet - dead before their time, and others John had yet to be acquainted with. Tim did not seem the type of man to ally himself with the very creatures he fought against. And yet, he had. He never denied it in the woods, indeed he defended it, told John that Sam was going to be something dangerous, something terrible.
John thought of Mary, cut and burned in Sam’s nursery, the way Sammy had been looking up at her, amused, when John first entered the room. John knew that Sam had been to young to understand, that he probably thought his mother was being silly by going on the ceiling like that, but still, there was a part of John that worried about the circumstances, that always had. Why had that demon killed Mary? And why in Sam’s room, above Sam’s crib? That could not have been coincidence, could it? What had Mary seen when she went into the nursery that night? John feared both the idea of discovering the truth, and of never knowing the truth. Both held the power to destroy him.
His hands itched for the bottle of whiskey Jim kept on the top shelf, to feel the burn down his throat and let his thoughts wander until his mind went numb. Instead he crept up the stairs to the spare room he had put the boys to sleep in, stood silently in the doorway watching the steady rise and fall of his boys’ even breathing. They were curled up in the bed together, Dean’s arm protectively over his brother, Sam burrowed under the blankets so only the very top of his head was visible.
John stared at Sam and immediately felt guilty for entertaining a train of thought that made his youngest part of the reason his wife died, that would lead to his youngest becoming a monster. There was nothing bad in Sam, not at all. He was a sweet child, always trusting, always faithful in his father and brother. He needed to remember that, no matter what Teresa might tell him later.
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“Hey Tress,” Bobby said softly from the doorway to Teresa’s hospital room. The surgery had taken hours, and afterwards they hadn’t let Bobby see her, told him to wait until visiting hours. So he had his chest stitched and bandaged, and his head examined, leaving him with what would become some nasty scars, and a minor concussion.
Bobby watched as Teresa’s eyes sluggishly turned to him. He expected to see her loopy on the amount of morphine coursing through her system, but instead she seemed strangely lucid. “Bobby,” she said, beckoning him into the room.
He sat in the chair beside the bed. “How’re you doing?” She glared at him in response. “Okay, stupid question. What did the doctors have to say?” They wouldn’t go into the specifics with Bobby and he feared the response.
“I’m out,” she whispered. “Twenty years of hunting and now I’m out,” she said with a strangled sort of laugh. “A bullet and a lower level demon, what bullshit, what absolute goddamned bullshit.”
“Tress…” Bobby began, reaching out to put his hand over hers.
“Don’t, Bobby… just don’t,” she muttered, pulling her hand away. “The doctors said that when I hit the tree… the bullet dislodged from the muscle and pushed against my spine. No amount of physical therapy will ever correct the damage the bullet and the tree did to my spine. He said I’ll be able to walk, but that’s it. And my left leg will be prone to problems, some days I might not be able to move it at all. I can’t hunt anymore.”
“Twenty years is a good run,” Bobby pointed out, unsure of what else he could say.
“I know that,” she said quietly. “I really do, I mean with the amount of people who died… but I just never thought… I expected it to be a final showdown, you know? Me versus Yellow-Eyes, him returning to take back the favor of letting me live, a showdown, a blaze of glory, something different. And instead it was something so stupid, Tim and a lower-level demon. I turned my back on him. He had a gun on me and I turned around. How could I have been so goddamned stupid?!”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself for this!” Bobby protested. “Tim shot you! After everything you’ve ever done for him! Why would you even think that he would consider pulling that trigger? This is not your fault.”
“I didn’t think he would pull it - I really didn’t. And now he’s gone.”
“The boys are safe though Tressy, and that’s thanks to you. You saved those kids.”
It was my fault they were in danger in the first place, she wanted to say. She wanted to shout it, to tell everyone that it was her own stupidity that caused all of this. It was her journal that Tim had read, her journal that put Sam Winchester in the category of a potential psychic. And then she was the one who turned her back on Tim, who got herself shot, who barely saved Sam from the demon.
She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the last time she fought that type of demon, remembered see the boy’s veins burst, boiling blood coursing down his limbs, the demon lapping it up and moaning with pleasure. And she had just watched silently, doing nothing to save him as she worked to trap the demon. The horrified look on the boy’s brother’s face had been terrible. But she just exorcised the demon, called the police, and then carried the traumatized boy to the hospital. She could still see his shell-shocked eyes and hear his brother’s screams in her mind as clearly as she had that day.
And she almost let it happen again, to Sam Winchester this time, because she had been stupid enough to get herself shot.
What a way to go out, what a way to retire. She almost wished that Tim or the demon had killed her.
“Tress, say something,” Bobby pleaded. His eyes were wet, and she took a deep breath, trying to quell the rage growing inside of her.
“I just… I don’t know what to do Bobby,” she sighed finally. “For twenty years I’ve been living out of a Volkswagen bus with a weapons cache, fake IDs, and a stack of cash garnered from hustling pool and poker. What the hell am I supposed to do now?” She had no contingency plan for this, she lived day to day, thought of nothing besides the next hunt, piecing her demon theories together, and reminding herself of why she got into this business in the first place. Katrina… the memory of that girl, her best friend, her closest companion, still haunted her. She had vowed to one day solve the riddle and stop that demon, it was all that kept her going for so long. And even though she had realized that she may never achieve that, settling down never even occurred to her. Not since…
She turned to look at Bobby again, remembered a different time in her life, when she almost changed her life, almost included someone else in it. But it had been too long, she was too far away from the person she had been now, she couldn’t change the past.
“I don’t know Teresa,” he said honestly, knowing that any empty words or praise would only incite her anger right now. She reached out her hand and he took it gently in his, rubbing his fingers over the calluses years of handling guns had built up. “But we’ll figure it out. I promise you, you won’t have to do this alone.”
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“Dad?” Dean said tentatively, breaking his father out of his musings. John sat at the kitchen table, his journal out in front of him as he described the demon and how to exorcise it.
“Yeah Dean?” John asked, turning to his son.
Dean climbed up into the chair next to John and stared at him silently for a moment before finally speaking. “I messed up, Dad,” he whispered.
“What do you mean?” John asked, tipping his eldest’s chin up so he could see into his green eyes.
“I was supposed to protect Sammy, but he almost… When that guy came into the motel room, I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t stop him. And then in the woods, that thing got him, and would’ve killed him and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.” Dean’s voice shook and his jaw trembled as his eyes filled with tears.
John shook his head and sighed. “That wasn’t your fault, Dean, none of it. Tim was a human, you know, and for whatever reason, he targeted you boys. I know you did the best you could, you shouldn’t feel guilty about what happened. I screwed up, dude, I left you two alone when I shouldn’t have. And besides, you’re fine, your brother is fine, it all worked out okay, right?”
“But that lady… she got us out Dad, she found us in the cave, and sent me and Sammy up ahead while she stayed back to try and stop that man. She’s hurt, isn’t she? I heard a gunshot, and she wasn’t walking right, and then you had to carry her out of the woods. She’s hurt because of me and Sammy.”
“Dean, you know a little bit about what I do - the hunting.”
“Right,” Dean responded.
“And hunting is dangerous, every hunter knows that they might get hurt. But they do it anyway, to protect people. That’s what that woman - Teresa - did. She’s a hunter, Dean, and she did whatever was necessary to protect you and your brother. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Dean responded tentatively. He opened his mouth to speak again when the door opened.
Daniel paused as he entered, knowing he had interrupted a private moment. “Just came by to get Teresa’s journal,” he explained stiffly.
“How’s she doing?” John asked, rubbing a weary hand over his face.
“Her spine’s damaged. She’s not going to be able to hunt again, might not even walk properly again,” Daniel sighed as he walked into a side bedroom. He came back holding a black journal in his hand. “But at least she’s alive.”
“I was going to swing by, there’re some things I need to ask her. Do you think that’d be okay?” John asked carefully, the argument with Daniel and the many ways in which Daniel was right still too fresh in his mind.
“I’ll ask her, okay? I better get back.”
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Teresa was lying flat on her back when John walked into the room, but her eyes were open and he somehow knew that she had noticed him the moment he stepped through the doorway, drugged to the gills or not. “I figured you would be by eventually,” she said, “though I had my money on tomorrow morning. After all, I did just have surgery.” She closed the black journal she had been leafing through and quickly shoved it under the blankets and out of sight.
“I would’ve waited if I thought I could, but I need to know something,” John said stiffly, approaching the bed. He sat in the plastic chair so he would no longer tower over her. Teresa reached for the bed remote and pressed one of the buttons until the bed moved into something resembling a sitting position. She winced a bit as the stitches pulled, but gave no other indication of discomfort.
“What is it, John?” she asked.
“Back in the woods, I asked Tim why he tried to kill my boys. He told me I should ask you, that you knew the real reason. So what was it, Teresa, why did he do that?”
Teresa heaved a long sigh, unsure of how to even approach the subject. “There are some… theories… circulating,” she began. “Some aren’t very favorable towards your son, Sam.”
“What theories, what are you talking about?” John demanded.
“The way your wife died, John… she’s not the first woman to die like that. And some hunters think that maybe it has something to do with the babies,” she said slowly.
“So Tim tried to kill Sammy because of Mary’s death? He thought Sam somehow had something to do with it?”
“It’s complicated John, but… I can’t explain it all to you, not now.”
“And why not? Do you know what killed my wife? Do you know what I’m searching for?”
“Oh John,” she sighed, shaking her head, knowing what John was really searching for, even if he wasn’t quite aware of it yet. “I don’t have the answers you’re looking for, only Mary knew that.”
“You know more than you’re saying though,” John pushed. “I can tell.”
“You can’t find it all out yet, you’re not ready,” she argued. “Trust me, I’ve been in this business for two decades, I know what I’m talking about.”
“Tell me the truth! What killed Mary?!” he shouted.
“Mary is the least of your worries right now, John. Mary is dead, you have to focus on your kids now.”
“Everything I do, I do for my kids.”
“Like leaving them alone in a cheap motel while you ran around playing hunter all weekend? Like leaving them completely unprotected and at the mercy of whatever or whoever happened by? Or how about dragging them so close to hunts, you don’t think one of those creatures will go after them eventually? You want to take care of your kids, John? Then take them out of this world, settle down somewhere and give them a normal life, that’s what they need.”
“All of you hunters are so quick to dish out judgment, and you don’t even know me or my boys.”
“I know that hunting comes with danger, and for most hunters it comes with a shortened lifetime. I’ve seen plenty of men around your age get mowed down in a hunt; too slow, too cocky, too distracted, too scared, all of it. And you have kids, dependents. Most hunters are single, independent, no one counting on them, no family except for their car and their guns. We get into this business because we lost the only people that made life worth living and we know that we couldn’t get through a day without some sort of reason to exist. And protecting other people from losing the people they love is the only way I got through these past twenty years. But you have family, John. You don’t belong in this world, and if you stay in it, you and your kids are going to suffer, and all three of you will die long before your time.”
“You think I can do any of that without Mary?”
“You’re certainly not doing anything for her here. Would she want her kids raised with this? Everything you do, you do for no one except yourself. You’re troubled, you’re confused, you’re seeing shadows everywhere, I get it, I understand, but you need to think about your life, then think about what your kids’ lives are going to be like if you don’t change something now, before it’s too late.”
“I’ve had this conversation too many times, with all sorts of people, and I’m still not going to change anything,” John growled. “Now tell me what you know about Sam.”
“You’re not ready, John. Okay? I’m serious, you’re really not ready. I know exactly how you’ll react, I know what’ll happen, and I’m not going to be the person who causes that. I promise you that when you need to know, I will tell you everything, but not a moment before.”
John gritted his teeth, but knew he would not be able to force the truth out of her.
“But if you’re going to keep hunting, you need to keep your kids away from the mainstream hunters. There are people you trust - Bobby, Jim - and that’s fine, but you can’t bring them to Harvelle’s or any of the other roadhouses. The people who go there, they’ve lost too much of themselves, they’re rough, and they kill anything they have suspicions about, no questions asked. Tim set up what he did because he didn’t want to dirty his own hands, and because he had doubts, but these other men never have doubts, they just do what they believe to be right, living by their own warped moral code. So promise me you’ll keep your boys away from all of that.”
“I can do that,” John agreed. He turned to the door and then paused. “Back in the woods…” he began tentatively. “I shot Tim, and…”
“Was that the first time you killed another human since you started hunting?” Teresa asked softly.
John nodded grimly.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, John. Sure Tim was a friend of mine once, but what he did… no matter how he may have justified it… you needed to protect your sons, you did what you had to do.”
John nodded but seemed unconvinced. He would have to work his way though that on his own. “Teresa… thank you for protecting my sons,” he said sincerely, remembering Dean’s words earlier.
“You’re welcome,” she smiled.
“The boys are downstairs with Jim, they wanted to thank you themselves, but I wanted to make sure you were up for it first.”
“Definitely.”
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The boys entered the room slowly, with a bit of apprehension. Teresa understood their fear, hospitals were never her favorite places either. Sammy smiled up at her when he entered, and walked over to the bed, Dean just behind him.
“Thank you for helping us,” Sammy said, climbing up on the chair in order to wrap his arms around her the best he could without jarring her injury. Teresa returned the hug, thinking of Tim’s accusations, the things he called Sam, the things he foretold for Sam’s future. She could not picture this child becoming the anti-Christ no matter what anyone said on the matter. She only hoped that life and hunting wouldn’t change him, though she knew that no hunter made it through more than a year with any innocence remaining intact. Her heart ached for the boys, knowing that their father’s stubbornness was setting them up for a life of weapons, violence, and risking their lives for strangers they would oftentimes never even meet.
“Thank you,” Dean said once Sam released his hold on her and slid back to the floor. “I’m real sorry that you got hurt, ma’am,” he added.
“I’m just glad that you two are alright. And you can call me ‘Tressy’,” Teresa responded. “Take care of your brother, okay?” she asked.
He smiled and nodded.
“Come on boys, time to go,” John said from the doorway where he stood watching the exchange.
“Bye,” Dean said, grasping Sam’s hand to pull him towards the door.
“Bye Tressy,” Sam called as Dean led him to the door.
“Bye boys.”
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“Have you given any thought to where you’ll go for outpatient care?” Bobby asked. The Winchesters had left the hospital, and possibly Minnesota itself by now. Bobby, Jim, and Daniel had come by Teresa’s room to visit.
“I don’t know,” Teresa shrugged.
“You’re more than welcome to stay at the rectory,” Jim offered.
“No thanks Jim, I don’t want the congregation getting any ideas about the two of us,” she laughed. “I just think I want to get out of Minnesota, away from that forest.”
“My cabin’s got plenty of room,” Daniel said.
“We would be at each other’s throats in two minutes, Daniel, you know that,” Teresa shook her head. Bobby whispered something to the two other men and they filed out without a word, leaving Bobby and Teresa alone.
“Why don’t you come up to South Dakota?” he suggested. “A hospital’s pretty close, I’ve hard it’s good too.”
“Bobby… we’ve been down that road…” Teresa began, uncomfortable.
“Not like that, Tress - just you and me, just two old hunting partners. I’ll even let you rearrange my library. What do you say?” He sounded hopeful, and Teresa could not say no.
“Alright, we’ll give it a try, but if I have the sudden urge to shoot you full of buckshot you’ll have brought it on yourself.”
“Deal.”
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John pulled up to a gas station. The sun had long since set and the boys were curled up under an old blanket in the back seat of the Impala. He exited the car, and being sure to keep the boys in his line of sight, he walked the short distance to a phone booth. Slipping the coins into the slot he waited and then dialed a number he had come to know very well.
“Hi Ellen, it’s John,” he said tentatively. “Listen, I’m not going to be able to make it out for that hunt with Bill. Yeah, something’s come up and I need to be elsewhere. Yeah, we’re all fine, but I just think I need to stay in one place for a bit, let the boys settle a little before I go hunting again. Give my best to Bill. Thanks, bye.” He sighed as he hung up the phone.
He sometimes wished he could give up hunting, but the fact was that hunting had become a necessary part of his life, part of who he was. He could no sooner give it up than he could walk without legs. It was the only thing that made him feel safe, that made him able to get out of bed in the morning, knowing that someday he could avenge Mary’s death, that he could save his boys from that specter he somehow knew verged on the horizon. The boys would be okay, he would see to that. And he would never make the mistake of trusting the wrong people again.
The End.
I would love to know what you thought. Thanks for reading.