Chapter 16: Past the Garden Shed and Straight Ahead (J2, NC-17)

[anniespinkhouse]

Fic title: Past the Garden Shed and Straight Ahead
Artist name: amberdreams
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: past domestic abuse, sexual language, cussing, Chad

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***

He was under a dazzling spotlight with the Queen, while everything else faded into a black fog around them.


He bowed, “My Queen.”

She rolled her eyes, “Call me Ruth.”

He thought she had a lilting accent, Irish maybe. For some reason it seemed familiar.

She huffed, “Scottish,” she said, “Why does everyone think I sound Irish? I’ll have you know that our branch of the family came over from Glasgow on the Snow Amity in 1716.”

Okay, she just read his mind. Concentrate on intent, Jared.

“Probably because of leprechauns and folklore and all that stuff. Ireland is more romantic than Glasgow...” He clapped his hand over his mouth, had he really said that out loud?

She raised her eyebrows, “Yes, you did.”

“Are you really the Faerie Queen?” He couldn’t stop running his mouth.

She preened herself and announced haughtily, “I am indeed a Faerie Queen and I have little time to waste on humans who change their mind.” She glared at him.

Uh-oh.

“You bring me homage. You wish to deny my son.”

He did a double take, “Your son?”

She nodded, “Your betrothal displeases you.”

This was not going well.

“That is not for you to judge,” she snapped back at his thought.

He stammered, “It’s not that it displeases me, more that … I don’t know. I was a child. My mother made a promise and I don’t know what is expected of me. I just want to live a normal life, make normal, bad dating decisions,” he paused, Jensen’s kiss still buzzed through his veins, “Maybe good ones too. The point is I would like them to be my decision. I am sorry, so sorry for that. Maybe if your son had come to claim me earlier, it would have worked out, but I waited and waited and now…”

“Now you have found somebody you wish to chance your betrothed heart with?”

He thought his betrothed heart might beat through his ribs with fear. “Yes.”

“For that honesty, I applaud you Jared Padalecki. I shall counter it with my own. Our magic is tricky, it requires much study and experience. To use it impetuously, is reckless and dangerous.” She seemed to be looking over Jared’s shoulder as she spoke. There are reasons a final claim was never made.

Hope flared, “So, you can let me go?”

“Reversal magic is more tricky. I cannot simply wave a magic wand. It requires your total honesty.”

She stared into his soul. It felt as if his skin would crawl from his flesh. “You need to return to where it started.”

“I was a child. I don’t remember.”

“You do remember, Jared Padalecki.”

His ankle hurt and darkness closed in on him, whirling in dizzying smoke curls. He leaned heavily on his stick, and he remembered it all.

Red eyes, broken heart, the pain of being ripped from his crying mother.
Sitting opposite a cop in a bare painted room, his teacher by his side, “We think you do remember, Jared.”
Kicking a table leg and yelling, “I don’t! I don’t want to remember!”
Stroking a white rabbit with his dirty fingertips, the fur softening his focus.

But that wasn’t all. There was a before.

The same fingers smoothing long white ears. “Have a cup of tea, bunny.” But his teacup was gone, smashed to the ground in his father’s hand, then spirited away by a trio of cherub faeries with eyes of verbena and borage.

He felt sick. He held his hand up to his face, looked at his big, calloused, yeti fingers and recalled when they were small and mucky with soil.

Mother in the garden, father stumbling into their house in a drunken haze.
A desperate boy accepting help from tiny playmates.
“You have to promise to marry my brother,” a cherub had laughed, offering a toy teacup for him to snatch away with a careless, "I promise.”
Anything to stop the inevitable beating.
Small fingers shaking as they played ‘bartender’, offering ‘rum’ to his incoherent father who accepted it with a sneer, just amused enough to play along .

He remembered his mother rushing in to save her husband as he slumped to the floor choking, or maybe to save her confused son, or perhaps even herself.

Faeries flitting about her, their squeaky, panicked whispers at her ear.
His mother crying out, “Anything! Take it from me, and let my boy live well and be loved."
A breeze that stirred curtains and flicked papers as a flurry of rainbow wings departed, leaving behind sirens and chaos, flower petals and a white rabbit.

It was all there, every moment of the afternoon when Jared had poisoned his father and signed his own future away.

“Oh god! Oh god! What did I do?”

He collapsed to the cool grass, without a care for the painful jolt to his ankle. It was him. It had been him all along. While everyone had pointed fingers at his mother, while she had suffered in her madness and incarceration, he had escaped justice, and lived a charmed life. He had made the deal he had bitched so royally about. He was a murderer and whatever punishment followed, he deserved it.

Ruth squatted beside him, “No, you were a child. You were all children. It was my fault - such carelessness. I should not have allowed your interaction. Alas, I like this realm. It is messy and tragic but it satisfies me in a way which endless sunshine, and narcissistic elves cannot." Her crimson-bright lips curved up and she had a faraway look on her face, "And the men are kind of hot," she sighed, and then continued, "I have a weakness to make human children happy and it seemed so innocent, our babies playing together. What could be the harm?"

She shook her head and flicked back her long hair,  "I learned my lesson that day. I hoped that Felicia had messed up her spell - she was so young. And I thought if we moved away and let you be, then the magic would fade. But no, as time passed, it only strengthened. My Fli was a natural, and her intent was true. My dear, the contract could only be broken by you.”

She looked beyond him again. “It is time,” she told the ones who lurked at the edge of the circle.

The ebony swirl began to clear and a lantern drew close. Christian, Jensen and Felicia stepped into the circle.

He looked at their faces, really looked, at Christian’s eyes, Felicia's and then Jensen’s. His mother’s words echoed in his mind, “... blue you see, like borage flowers... … like verbena, such bright green eyes.”

Ruth addressed Jensen, while Jared remained broken, struggling to comprehend the enormity of the truth his quest had uncovered.

“Jensen, will you rescind your betrothal to Jared?”

He heard the question, was still processing it when Jensen answered, clear and unwavering, “I release Jared from his betrothal.”

“It is done.”

“No! No! No!” He wailed, but it was too late. He felt something snap within him, like a button popping from a tight shirt. The contract was broken, and with it his heart. All this pain, not for him, but because Jensen did not want to be betrothed to him. He pounded the soil with his hand in despair. He had done enough research over the years to know that the Fae could not be trusted but Jensen had blindsided him, with his looks and his charm.

Deep down he had known though hadn’t he? Chad had warned him and he hadn't listened. His father had charmed his mother, was charming even to his colleagues who never saw what was underneath. Even Felicia and Christian had fooled him. He was an idiot, a dumb killer and his punishment was deserved and unbearable.

“You were a child,” Ruth repeated, “And I do not appreciate your old fashioned prejudices. Time moves on, we integrated. We make mistakes like anybody. We have our good and bad folk. We can be quick and intuitive but we are not evil. Felicia played at casting a spell - she was too young to know it could be real. You played with your tea set - you were too young to understand poisons. Jensen did not manipulate you. He agonized over doing the right thing for you.”

He placed where he’d heard her voice. The charity gala!  She actually was Jensen’s mother.  “You’re big faeries,” he mused.

“Big, small, herb garden or house. We’re faeries. We can choose. Most days I choose to be a faerie godmother and I am better than the Disney version. Which reminds me, I have a breakfast date with Prince Charming.” With a wink and a dramatic puff of smoke she shrank to the size of a humming bird and disappeared in a flurry of glittery rainbow wings. He blinked, she was definitely gone.

“I should probably go too.” Felicia disappeared in her own puff of smoke.

Jared gulped back tears and sniffed. His entire life was a lie. His love was a lie. Even his friends. He may as well stay here, on the orchard grass until the fruit ripened and rotted, until he was gone with it. Goosebumps covered his skin and he shivered uncontrollably. He had a sudden, stomach curdling thought. “Chad?” he wondered.

“Oh, no! No!” Jensen said, firmly. “That boy is nothing to do with us. He is entirely human and every idiot scrape he got you into - entirely his own dumb fault.”

It was a crumb of comfort, he supposed. “Then at least Chad has never lied to me. He’s worth ten of you!” he spat angrily back.

Christian sat on the grass beside him. “I’m sorry. For y’know, my stupid family and everything else.”

“And you?”

“What?” Christian looked confused.

“What about you? You could have told me. Did you really want a date with me, or was that part of…” he waved towards Jensen, “...all of your plan for me?”

Christian looked down at the grass and then back to him, making eye contact, “You’re hot, you’re kind and you’re funny, okay? And Felicia never specifically promised you to Jensen . I thought, if the magic was non-specific, then maybe we could have something? I wanted to find out. And why not? You’re both allowed to have fun. I should be allowed to have fun too.”

Jensen made a noise, closely resembling a growl and Christian looked up at him, nervously.

“Only, apparently not, because the whole thing made Jensen ill and mom freaked the fuck out and yanked me to Vegas and sent Jensen back to you. Yeah, mess."

"You didn't get the red-eye from Vegas, did you?" Jared asked Jensen.

Jensen shook his head and shrugged, "No need for it. I mean we do travel normally sometimes, nobody wants to look suspicious, but its so slow."

More lies. Jared couldn't hold back the flood of tears any more, fat salty drops rolled down his cheeks.

Christian spoke up again, “I know a good faerie-friendly shrink, if you want their number. For now, I can whip up cocoa and find cookies.”

“I’m not a child!” Jared snarled at him.

“Leave him alone!” Jensen snarled too.

“Such a jealous ass.” Christian retorted.

Jensen narrowed his eyes and Christian shrank in a poof of cotton candy smoke, turning into a tiny azure-winged faerie. He danced on the sighing breeze, vanishing beyond the pooling light of the lantern.

Alone now within the soft glow, Jensen handed Jared his stick and offered a hand to haul him to his feet, “No,” he told Jared, “You’re not a child. You’re grown man, a good person, but for a moment, back there, it was real again. You were a scared, vulnerable kid who was all out of options.”

Jared wanted to believe him but who kills their own dad? He had been seven years old. He had been in school, he knew not to steal, he understood that hurting people was wrong.

“You asked for protection for yourself and your mother. Anybody would. And Fli wanted to help but she was a child too. We were playing at superheroes. How could any of us have known it would be real? You saved yourself and saved your mother. You were heroic in that moment.”

How old does a faerie need to be to know that their magic is real?

Despair turned back to rage. Jared refused to take his hand, “You ruined my life! You strung me along yet you couldn’t wait to get rid of me! This whole quest, all of it, you knew what would happen and you were waiting for your chance to ditch me. Everything! The moose, Christian’s date, it’s all been a set up.” He pointed down at his cast, “You magicked up a white stag and broke my ankle just so I would take this quest.”

Jensen pouted, “I only wanted an honest relationship. Your spirit animals have been with you from the start, they were your guides! And the porch timbers were rotten, Jared. I thought you could read.”

“This place? Was the story of your great aunt even real?”

“She was real. This….” Jensen glanced around the orchard, “...was her home.”

He felt small and exhausted. “You talk about honesty but your sort don't know what it means. You're a fake! Everything was a lie!”

Jensen’s shoulder’s drooped and his eyes shone with tears, “Not all of it,” he countered.

“I want to go home. Take me home.” He let Jensen help him up and support him back to the Impala. They didn’t speak. There was no more to be said.

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