Le Chant Des Oiseaux: Chapter 1
Dean tries to place a rhythm to the staccato beat the rain is pounding out on the roof of the garage. Soon enough he abandons the effort in favor of closing his eyes, tipping his head upon the car's headrest, and begging the sound to drive away, for just a moment, a moment that's all he asks, the thrumming, electric pain that courses through his veins every moment of every day.
He reins in what he can, trying not to bleed his emptiness over every facet of Lisa and Ben's life. But when it rains, the water falling from the sky feels too much like the world is mocking the endless tears he refuses to cry. That's when he retreats to the refuge of the retired Impala. Here, in the shelter of home and surrounded by memories, he can imagine the rain is the Earth weeping for Sam in a way that Dean cannot.
The moment he does, the rain will cease, and Sam, Sammy, will cease.
So while he begs for a moment's respite from the drag of Sam's dearth in his life, he hopes, but does not pray, that the moment doesn't come.
His eyes fixed on the cloth car ceiling, he catches movement in his peripheral vision.
He's not entirely positive there was movement in his peripheral vision. Still, the years (his life) of honing his tracking skills to all visible and invisible movements within his field of sight instinctually tell him: movement.
Dean straightens up, tensing ill-used muscles. His right hand snakes down to the silver knife housed in an ankle sheath, his left levers open the door handle. There’s movement, there, a shadow briefly blocking the weak backyard light coming in through the garage door window.
With the car door ajar, Dean strains to hear anything over the pouring rain cascading onto the garage's tin roof. He tips his head upward, whispers, "Shh." He catches the shadow dancing once more across the window. It's still an indistinct blur, even with Dean's eyes accustomed to the two hours spent in the unlit garage; a life spent in the dark.
He unclenches his muscles, slithers out of the car. He slowly picks his way across the garage until his back is against the wall and beside the door. Dean steadies his breath in an attempt to hear something besides the rat-a-tat-tat rain and the thumping of his heart. This should be easy, this should be like slipping on a hand-sewn leather glove, this slipping into hunter mode. He is unpracticed, though, and his instincts are dulled, marred by months spent trying to temper his grief in the face of Lisa's kindness. Of Ben's easy acceptance of him despite the mornings Dean greets him with bloodshot eyes and a gruff voice.
They acquiesced to him in a way that Dean has been unable to reciprocate. On a night Dean spent in the pitiful embrace of tequila, he'd asked, "Why, Lisa?" She’d answered, "Because." Dean had railed at that, screaming at her, "That's something you tell a kid when you tell them they can't have ice cream for dinner, dammit.“ Lisa scribbled a note, stuffed it in Dean's jean pocket, then left him to wallow in his martyrdom
The following morning, Dean had spent a considerable amount of time praying to the porcelain goddess - Why aren't you here to tell me what an ass I am, Sam? When he could finally stand upright without faceplanting onto the tiled bathroom floor, Dean stripped out of his sweat soaked, puke covered clothes to take a twenty minute shower - five minutes to get clean; fifteen spent berating himself for ever inflicting his pathetic existence on this family; one second to curse Sam for making him promise. One second too long.
It wasn't until he stooped down to corral his clothes into a plastic bag, debating whether he should even attempt to clean them, or if it was better all the way around - and forget about the entire night - to just throw them out, that he spotted the crumpled paper sticking out of a jean pocket.
The note was barely legible, the pencil markings had been nearly rubbed off. Dean held it to the glare of the bathroom vanity light and read, "You ask me why, and I say because. Because you and Sam saved Ben. Because you have saved so many people. Because Sam saved the world. Because you love Sam, and I love Ben, and I can't save you. But I can keep you from killing yourself. So when I say because, I mean because."
Dean, Sam, their dad, other hunters, none of them had ever stuck around to watch the consequences of their actions play out for those people whose lives they saved (altered). It was a miracle if they ever encountered them, again, and if they did, even knew of the changes that had been wrought.
Lisa may always have been this way, she may have been inalienably altered before Dean ever stumbled back into her life that lonesome night after his brothers, possessed as they were by Lucifer and Michael, fell from the world and collapsed a void that took up residence in Dean's soul. Whichever the case may be, she had kept him from swan diving into a bottle of liquid courage every night simply because. The one time Dean had talked to a shrink about the whole thing, the guy had brought up the possibility of Dean sporting an Oedipal complex. Dean had left so fast, he was sure there had been a cartoon-like dust cloud in his wake.
Maybe the guy had something, but Dean found examining his life too closely led to either rage-fueled alcohol binges or nights of endless forced jocularity, or both, in an attempt to stave off the reality of his fucked-up life. A fucked-up life that consisted of Sam dead, caught in Lucifer's cage, and him topside feeding off the kindness of others. Dean gave up trying to sort out what he owed Lisa and Ben in return, but kept vigil, ensuring the traps and sigils placed in and around the house were complete. Finding out what exactly was creeping around their lawn in the middle of a midsummer night's rainstorm seemed the very least he could do.
Gripping the door knob tight and the knife tighter, Dean eases the door inward. The drenching rain obscures what little there is to see, but there's something there. A something where there should be nothing; an amorphous darkness interrupting the light spilling from the kitchen window. The right side of the shape is nearly straight, but the left side is a jumble of arcs and lines that seem to resemble a large, tattered wing.
For an instant, lightening cracks a burst of day-bright light through the sky, and Dean nearly falls to his knees. The silver knife clangs to the concrete as it slips from his hand, and he runs through the sloppy swamp the downpour has made of the yard towards the sight before him. It's Castiel, one wing extended and draped around a figure slumped within Castiel's trenchcoat. A figure that can only be Sam.
Dean splashes mud and uprooted grass onto both Castiel and Sam when he stops abruptly in front of them. He reaches a trembling hand towards his brother. Sam, who is barefoot, hair plastered to his face, rain running in rivulets down his body, but whose eyes are focused entirely on Dean. Dean would think the whole scene a grief-induced hallucination if not for the force with which Castiel grips his wrist before Dean can touch Sam.
"It's best not to touch, yet, Dean."
Castiel's voice is a whisper in the rain, but reverberates down Dean's spine. Dean doesn't retract his hand, but neither does he fight against Castiel's grip. Castiel lowers Dean's arm. "The rain is painful enough for him, your touch will likely be far more than he needs, right now."
"Then," Dean nearly chokes on the adrenaline coarsing through him, "then let's get the hell inside." Castiel nods, turning Sam with his wing towards Lisa's home. Sam stumbles at first, but rights himself, and walks beneath the shelter of Castiel's wing, huddled within Castiel's coat. Dean gathers his own wits about himself, then hurries to open the mudroom door ahead of them.
The house is quiet and cool, almost reverently so, compared to the raging, chaotic thunderstorm outside. At the entrance, Castiel stops their progress. He locks his eyes on Dean's. "This is as far as I go. This is as much as I can do." Castiel retracts the protective wing, and slips his coat off of Sam's shoulders. "He chose."
For as much as Sam's sudden reappareance under the shelter of an Angel of the Lord was, to say the least, shocking, it's those spoken words that jolt Dean to his core. Neither of them, neither Sam nor Dean, nor their parents, nor anyone ever in their lives has ever truly had a choice. They've been manipulated, goaded, hoodwinked, and forced into every step along their tortorous path. And that manipulation has led to this moment: to Sam standing ankle-deep in a muddy morass of earth, seemingly resurrected and alive -- free from the grip of hell's dominion of fury, from fiery Lucifer's grip. Castiel cannot have said that Sam chose anything, because that isn't possible, and Dean's had lifetimes for that one fundamental truth to be beaten through his skull and deep into his soul.
"Cas, what the fuck? I don't, just tell me what. What is going on? What choice?"
Castiel doesn't answer, merely shrugs his coat back onto his shoulders. Dean's about to grab him by the lapels and shake an answer out of him, when Castiel turns to fully face Sam. Placing his hands on either side of Sam's face, Castiel pitches his voice loudly, "Godspeed to you, Sam."
Dean watches in stunned silence as Sam blinks his eyes, smiles at Castiel, and slips out of the embrace to climb the small staircase into Lisa's house, to Dean. Sam's pupils contract in the fluorescent light. He smiles at Dean, leaves watery footprints in his wake as he seeks out an unlit corner of the room, slumps down to the floor, hugs his legs to his chest, and rests his head upon his knees.
When Dean turns back to ask Castiel what in the holy fuck is going on, he half-expects Castiel to be gone, to have flitted away, again, as he always does. Instead, Castiel stands in the pouring rain, a look of deep sadness etched across his face. "Take care, Dean. Tell him, if, when he,” Castiel’s eyes roam the perimeter of Lisa’s house, “no longer requires the walls, to say the words to let it in.”
Castiel extends his wings to fly away, leaving Dean adrift in the home of a woman he barely knows, with the person he knows best. His brother is curled silently in the corner of a room filled with cast-off shoes, thread-bare clothes, and a humming, incessant fluorescent bulb lighting everything with a clinical glare.
Dean doesn't know whether to cry or puke.
~*~
Dean and Bobby spend fervent weeks attempting to decipher how Sam came back. They re-visit the copious research Sam himself had gathered, had poured through, during those dark months before Dean's deal came due. Then, as now, there's simply nothing.
Bobby, as always a man true to his word, vows to continue the search. Dean hasn't the heart to tell him to forget it; it matters less with each passing month. In those first heady weeks of Sam's return, Dean felt helplessness settle deep within him as he listened to Sam scream when touched; as he counted the long minutes for Sam to recover from a frothing seizure; as he bandaged Sam's left arm where he'd scratched layers of skin off to paint bloody sigils across his bedroom floor.
Together, Dean, Lisa, and Ben learn how to make those days fewer and less frequent. Ben plays video games with headphones crammed into his ears; Lisa huddles in a corner of the bedroom to talk on the phone; Dean learns to speed read the closed captions for football games.
Eventually, Sam drinks protein shakes and merely blinks back tears on sunny days. Dean gives up caring about the hows and whys, about fixating on Castiel's words, when Sam goes two months without scratching off his skin, suffering a seizure, or opening his mouth to expel a guttural, visceral scream.
Dean knows that he could not have done this alone; that as before Sam's return, he is in debt to Lisa and Ben's acquiescence to Dean’s, and Sam's, needs. He tries to thank her, to tell Lisa how grateful he is even as the silence presses in, pushes down, cocoons them all into a swaddled low-pitched aural world.
Lisa nods, points to Ben running in the backyard. "Because Sam did that."
~*~
Dean nudges the door to Sam's room open with his boot. A year on, his steel- toed boots no longer clang against the wood. He walks in, toe-heel, toe-heel, to lessen the noise of his steps on the hard-wood floor. He pauses at the foot of Sam's bed. Sam is huddled in his usual spot, back to the bed, legs drawn up to his chest, bare feet and hands pressed firmly to the wood floor beneath him. The blinds are closed tight, the black-out drapes tightly secured against any hint of sunlight.
The protein shake, the only thing Sam will consume even on his good days, sweats in Dean's hand. He tightens his grip to keep it from slipping and slopping its contents across the floor.
Sam pivots his head, turning it until his eyes meet Dean's. For an imagined moment, Dean projects the emotions that used to perpetually flit and crash across Sam's face. Sam's face is constant now. An unchanging blank mask marked only by the muscle movements needed to move his eyes, slurp down the thick shake, or occasionally furrow his brow. More akin to motions necessary to exist rather than to live, for there is little thought or emotion behind the movements.
Dean waits for Sam to blink his eyes, to pivot his head back so his eyes return to some blank spot on the bedroom wall before Dean comes any closer. Dean leans back against the wall, slides down to the floor, mirroring Sam's position across from him.
Placing the perspiring plastic tumbler between them, Dean pitches his voice low and calm, "I brought your dinner, Sammy."
Occasionally, Sam will reach for it immediately, his hand darting out so fast, so quick, it's a blur. Those times, Sam will ignore the straw in favor of ingesting the viscous mixture in a few greedy swallows.
Sometimes, Sam will snake his hand out to clasp the rim. Moments will pass before he slides it across the floor, eventually lifting it to his mouth. Moments more pass before he'll place his lips to the proferred straw and slowly, with the hesitation of a dying man, sip the liquid. Those moments add up to hours. But once the hours pass, Sam has consumed the shake, and Dean knows for one day more at least, Sam won't wither from malnutrition.
Most times, like today, Sam's eyes stay fixed to a spot above Dean's left shoulder; the drink sits neglected as the ingredients separate into distinct layers. Dean learned to forgo begging, cajoling, pleading, bargaining with Sam on these days. He only drove himself into a frenzy trying to drag a reaction, an action, out of Sam. On Dean's worst day, he flung the shake against the far wall while unleashing a primal growl of his own.
He cut his hands in a million little places cleaning the glass shards off the floor. He only brings the drink in a plastic tumbler now. Not for Sam, for himself. For himself so he doesn't rip his hands to ribbons in some macabre parody of Sam's livid, scarred arm.
Dean rubs his wet hand back and forth against his denim clad leg, breathes deep before giving the speech he recited for an hour beforehand.
"So, Sam, I was wondering." Dean mimics Sam as he fixes his eyes over Sam's shoulder. It reeks of cowardice not to look at Sam's face, but Dean knows he won’t see a reaction to his words there, and at a time like this, Dean needs to disengage himself. "Actually, Lisa asked, if, um, if you want to come downstairs. You know, sit with us for dinner. Whaddya think, Sammy? You think you can handle hanging out with us, tonight?" Dean waves his hand towards the bedroom door. "I'll make sure we don't get too loud, okay?"
In his peripheral vision, Dean watches Sam tilt his head.
Dean’s eyes aren't even that far away from Sam, they never have been, so Dean simply slides his gaze over to Sam. He inhales sharply through his nose; Sam's eyes are sparkling with intent and sharply focused on Dean.
"Cuckoo birds tried to take Ben. The cuckoo birds, they're gone. Ben isn't a cuckoo bird, anymore."
Sam's voice is clear, not hoarse from weeks of disuse like Dean expected. Sam's words are gibberish, but they make an odd sort of sense. At last, Sam is engaging Dean, and Dean's heart leaps from his chest, into his hand, ready to be offered again, again to the only person that he has ever truly loved.
It's Dean's voice that is choked and raspy when he replies, "What? Sam, what?" He fears any movement of his own will destroy the moment he has silently pleaded for, for so long.
Sam takes a deep swallow from the tumbler, then grins at Dean. "Cuckoos blew away. In flames. I remember that."
Dean watches rapt as Sam unfolds himself, stands to his full height, and offers a helping hand to Dean. "C'mon," he says. As if it has been Dean this whole time, these past many months that has kept them all in stasis.
Dean returns Sam's infectious smile. "Yeah, Sammy, c'mon."
~*~
The conversation is stilted, not quite awkward, but almost, as Sam sits with his shoulder touching Dean's, his right hand all but fused to Dean's left. Ben begins to recite a tale of soccer victory from his earlier game, his voice rising in volume as his hand gestures wildly aid in telling the tale.
Dean eyes Sam's right hand straying towards his scarred left arm, some of the wounds still pink and raw from weeks of Sam scratching open his skin with jagged fingernails, using the blood to draw indecipherable sigils on the floor, the walls, the door of his bedroom. He reaches out, guides Sam's hand back to the dishwater colored protein shake on the table. Dean says, "Here, Sammy, you're almost done with it."
Lisa casts an apologetic glance towards Dean, softly says, "Ben, inside voice." Ben turns shame-faced, tells Dean, "Sorry, sorry."
The room falls silent except for the scratch of flatware against dinnerware. Sam leans towards Ben, conspiratorially whispers, "I thought I was an albatross, once. Weighing everything down. But I wasn’t. Later, later I found out I was a hummingbird, a precious thing, even if sometimes I was a whippoorwill.”
Dean catches Lisa's worried glance over Sam's hunched form, questions him with her eyes. Dean shakes his head, he has nothing to offer her but his own concerned glance.
"You’re not an albatross, be a whippoorwill, okay? Tell the story, it’s okay. Okay?" Ben turns wide eyes to both Lisa and Dean before looking back to Sam.
"Okay, Sam."
Sam nods his head as if a bet has been settled, then leans back to press his shoulder into Dean's once again.
~*~
Sam doesn't become a chatterbox or a fully active participant in the world after that night, but neither does he revert back to a freakishly good impression of a marble statue nor a babbling, screaming mess. He walks around the house, staying mostly in the shadows. He touches objects with tentative fingers, talks about various migratory patterns of birds, and once, memorably attempts to make a shake on his own. Dean came running to Ben's shouts just in time to find Sam backed into the kitchen pantry as the blender whirled a mess of milk and bananas across the room.
After Dean pried Sam off the wall and into the next room, he said, "Look, just ask next time, okay Sammy?"
Sam stared into the kitchen for so long, Dean began to fear all Sam's progress had been undone by a KMart Blue Light Special blender, and wouldn't that just be par for the fucking course. Several more quiet beats passed between them, then Sam shook his head. "If we had a macaw, it would have learned that sound."
"Not sure what the hell that means, Sam, but let's go get the banana outta your hair, okay? Sound like a plan?"
Sam dutifully headed towards the bathroom, his hand trailing along the wall, repeating, "Macaw, macaw, macaw."
~*~
Two evenings later, Sam sits next to Dean, his left ear pressed against the hard wood table top Dean’s laptop is resting on. Dean’s researching a local case that caught his attention in the newspaper, a vague blurb about a family thought missing, lost in the local wilderness. Turns out they were found wondering a trail and told the police they'd been caught off-guard by a hungry bear, barely escaping with their lives. Their pictured pallor and vivid description certainly matched a story of being waylaid by a wayward bear, but Dean couldn't shake his hunter instincts that there was something so much more there.
"You have so much more time than your love of danger. Don't be a stranger to the life you have."
Sam's voice is soft as he speaks, but when Dean glances at him, he can see the firm set of Sam's mouth and the fiery intensity in his eyes. Looking Dean directly in the eye, Sam clutches Dean's hand, determination giving his words an edge, "Let it go, let someone else seize it." Before Dean can respond, before he can even begin to make sense of the words, Sam releases Dean's hand, and idly traces patterns on the wood.
When Lisa speaks, it startles Dean from his reverie. "He puts his head down next to the laptop a lot. I think the sound of the fan calms him."
~*~
Ten days later, Dean is mummifying Sam's left arm in sterile bandages.
Off Lisa's observation, Dean bought Sam one of those new-agey white noise machines. But when he'd turned it on, set it next to Sam, and hoped the “evening wind” setting - whatever the fuck that was - would mimic the whir of the laptop fan, Sam pulverized the thing. Between Sam's shouts of Dead! and Lies!, Dean managed to wrestle a plastic shard (so sharp) from Sam before he ruptured an artery with the goddamn thing.
Later, when Sam was caressing a wall in his bedroom, Dean’s curiosity gnaws at him. He asks, “Sam, what’s dead?”
Sam rubs his hand first clockwise, then counterclockwise, then clockwise, then back in a seemingly endless circle on the wall. Dean finds himself mesmerized by the motion. His eyes lose focus, crossed, spellbound in the repetitive movement.
When Sam responds, his voice is steely. “The plastic, it has no life. It’s mockery, mock, a mockingbird singing a song it shouldn’t. Lying about what it owns. Acting like it belonged in the tree, in the forest.” Sam’s hand slows, comes to rest at the apex of his imaginary circle. He cuts his eyes towards Dean, chokes out, “Chirping over the other songs.”
“All right, Sam, all right.” Dean doesn’t have a clue what his brother is talking about, but it seems to satisfy Sam who nods, drops his hand from the wall and smiles.
~*~
Ben's soccer season comes to an end. Ben had grown especially close to one of his teammates, Billy. Lisa and Ben, Billy and his parents all plan to attend the awards ceremony.
Dean tells Sam hesitantly, "I think I might go too, Sam."
Sam looks up from his cross-legged position on the floor. He wears the same infectious grin he'd sported the night he compared Ben to a cuckoo bird. "You should go."
"Yeah, it's just that…" Dean pauses, running a hand through his military-short hair, "it's just that it's that same family. You know, with the bear?"
"You're not going to quote the raven." Sam's steely voice matches the hard lines of his face. All trace of his previous whimsy is gone. "Don't seize it. Let the raven go."
Despite listening, he tried so hard, for months to Sam's ramblings about birds and their perceived relationship to everything from blenders to knotted wood, Dean feels, as always, like he’s failing.
Dean crouchs at eye-level with Sam. "Look, I really don't know what the hell you're talking about, Sam. Can ya help me out here a bit?"
Sam shakes his head, repeating, "Don't seize it. Let the raven go."
Latching on to the part that makes a vague sort of sense and combining it with a life spent deciphering Sam, Dean clasps Sam's hand. "I'm guessing I need to promise to just smile and nod, then come home with Lisa and Ben?"
When Sam nods vigorously in response, Dean feels a small victory shoot through him, pulling his heart back to his chest.
~*~
Dean keeps his promise, tangentially. He'd come back to Lisa's house with her and Ben after the awards ceremony. Ben, and the rest of his team received a ribbon, a trophy, some trinket or other. Dean hadn't promised, specifically, that he wouldn’t bring Billy and his parents back home.
The family seemed normal enough, at least by the standards Dean measured the world. Which meant Mark and Susan Falls had no beetle-black eyes, no obvious claws, and didn’t flinch when Dean muttered Christo. Whatever Sam had been referring to when he'd told Dean not to seize anything made even less sense when Billy's dad spent an hour droning on about the wonders of organic meat. That was an hour of Dean's life he was never getting back.
Several vain attempts to steer Mark towards recounting the grizzly bear tale later, Dean began to suspect there was nothing more to the story, or this guy, then met the eye. A weird occurrence, to be sure, but one with which Dean was at least passingly familiar. Mark and Susan seemed downright normal.
As they approach the threshold of Lisa's house, Mark and Susan, even Billy-- who was excitedly discussing XBox scores with Ben - slow down. The three come to a halt at the base of the steps leading to the front door.
Dean's spine tingles as he stares at the waiting family, part curious, part impatient, and part…something else. Mark, Susan, and Billy stare back. Lisa breaks the short stalemate, chuckling, “Well, I’ve got some ice cream that’s about to go bad, and that would be a shame, right boys? So everyone c’mon in.”
The whole situation actually feels downright normal to Dean. And that says a lot, considering his sojourn to Hell, not to mention Sam’s own all-expenses paid trip to the Big Below. He pushes the tingle away, pushes it down into the same hole he pushes all his fears.
Besides, Dean bargains with himself, Lisa and Ben had agreed to give him and Sam shelter. The least he could do was let them have company once in a while. It would be nice to have visitors in the house who hadn't had their souls flayed inside out for a change
~*~
Dean leans across the kitchen island, listens as Lisa and the Falls make small talk. The tingle is still there, something he can’t quite shake. He tells himself it’s nothing. There’s nothing to Mark and Susan standing behind the kitchen table, both gripping chair seatbacks with white knuckles. Nothing to Billy suddenly clamming up when Ben is still blabbing away. Their expressions still pass for normal, but they stand too rigid, eyes a little too wide. The tingle grows stronger. There’s a buzzing in Dean’s ears.
Ben is the first to notice. His eyes flick to the hallway that connects the kitchen to the stairway. Dean follows Ben's glance; it settles on Sam.
Sam is dressed as he always is: barefoot, jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt. But everything else is wrong. His left hand presses firmly against the wall, nails scraping off the paint in jagged stripes. His right hand twitches, alternatively flexing and clenching. His stance is wide, all of his weight balanced on the balls of his feet. If Dean didn't immediately recognize it for a hunter preparing for battle, then surely Sam's hunched shoulders, grim, thinly-set mouth, and blazing eyes would broadcast an impending attack.
Lisa notices next, and tension falls across the group as Mark and Susan go silent. When Sam speaks, his words pierce the heavy silence like a knife.
"Cardinals sing when their nests are threatened. They sing a lot because they build their nests too close to the ground, too easy they make their young, prey." He glares at the Falls.
"There is no prey, here,” he says slowly. “So I wonder, why do I hear cardinal song?"
Dean edges towards Sam, hand outstretched as he whispers his brother’s name.
Sam takes a step, re-settles his stance. His voice is a hammer, "How are you here and why do I hear cardinal song?!"
In a display of agility and speed Dean thought long-lost to Sam, Sam lunges at Billy. He grabs the boy’s arm and shoves him hard against the kitchen table.
"You are a cuckoo. Not yet, not yet."
While everyone else stands in shocked immobility, Dean grabs hold of Sam's shoulders.
"Sam, let go, man, he's just a kid." What the hell is Sam doing?
Sam shakes Dean off with a roll of his back and hauls Billy upright again. He yells, "Cuckoo bird, never to be a mockingbird, will you. But it is too late, cannot un-ring that bell!"
Dean gathers himself, pulls Billy away from a heaving, wild-eyed Sam.
Sam calls out, "Hold him, Dean, do not release the almost mockingbird."
Dean holds the boy tight, his mind spinning; he wonders desperately: What did I miss? What did I miss!?
Ben runs to his mother, as Sam ducks the punch Mark telegraphs from a mile away. Sam spins on his toes, snatches a chair, smashes it against the floor.
Sam growls, "Lisa, Ben, fly away to my room." He wields one of the shattered chair legs like a club, raises it menacingly at both Mark and Susan. The couple looks apoplectic with fear. Dean doesn’t blame them. Sam roars, "I know who you are. You cannot hide from me, never more." He advances towards them until their backs are pressed against the picture window. "The question I cannot answer," Sam continues loudly, "is why do I hear cardinal song?"
Dean turns to Lisa, who is clearly terrified, her arms around Ben in a protective hug. "Do what Sam says," he grits out, passing Billy over to her. "Take Billy, too, go, go now. Run!" Whatever the fuck has snapped in Sam's head, the fewer civilians in the way, the better. The fewer loved ones in the midst of Sam's rage, the better chance Dean has to save them all.
Latching onto both the boys, Lisa pivots on her heel towards the hallway. Dean bends to grab his knife from its ankle sheath, best for him to take Sam down before any blood is spilled.
Suddenly Sam cries out, "No," driving the chair leg deep into Mark's heart, simultaneously encircling Susan's neck with his other hand.
Too late, thinks Dean, too late.
But the blood that should be pumping from Mark's chest like a flash-flood, isn’t there. And Susan isn’t choking and fighting for breath; she’s fighting to free herself without once inhaling. Dean stares in stunned stupefaction. He may not be a doctor, but he knows breathing is pretty fucking important. His instincts might have been worn down over the past two years, but Dean's hunter mind is never at rest. Finally, the pieces slot into place.
Dean leaps after Lisa, catching Billy's hand. "Leave him here, Lisa."
Lisa stops, shock lacing her words, "Dean, what?"
"They're vampires,." Dean tells her. He nods towards Billy. "Him, too."
Billy pulls free of Dean's grasp, throws Dean to the floor.
"Your fucked up friend is right, I'm not, yet." Billy snarls.
Dean watches in horror as Billy yanks Ben from Lisa. The vamp kid bares his fangs, ready to bite Ben’s neck.
In the midst of Lisa's scream, Dean snatches his knife off the floor and plunges it into Billy's back. Ben drops to the floor, and crawls toward his mother. She pulls him close, sobbing in relief. Dean brings the knife down repeatedly, not thinking about the fact the vampire wears a boy’s face. He knows stabbing the vampire won’t kill it, but he had to stop Billy from killing Ben. What else was he supposed to do? He had to sever three vampire necks, keep Sam from going completely batshit on the rest of them, and protect the two people Dean owes his life - and remaining sanity - to .
It’s a tall order, but one that Dean’s trained for his whole life. Still, a Jesus Christ was worth muttering a few dozen times.
"You okay over there, Sammy?"
"Dean, I need --"
Dean can hear Mark and Susan hissing as they re-double their efforts against Sam.
Puncturing Billy like a stuffed pig slows the kid down, but for how long? Dean can’t risk leaving the kid at Ben and Lisa's feet with all that bloodlust fueling him.
His brief indecision is knocked on its ass when Lisa frantically whispers: "Butcher knife."
She scrambles up, Ben in tow, and heads straight for the knife block on the kitchen counter. Pulling out the butcher knife, she slides it across the marble countertop and yells, "Sam, nine o'clock sharp!"
Sam reaches out as the hilt slides into his hand. One hand is still around Susan’s throat and he slams her to the ground. Releasing her neck, Sam sings out, "Bye-bye, mockingbird!" In one smooth motion lops off her head.
Dragging Billy by his collar towards Sam, Dean yells, "Sam, behind you."
Sam blindly reaches back, wraps his hand around the impromptu wooden stake still sticking from Mark's chest, and slams him down beside his headless wife. "Never more, never more," Sam calls out before severing Mark's head off, as well.
Sam's heavy breathing is in concert with the drum of Dean's racing heart. Sam’s on his knees beside the corpses, the butcher knife still in his hand. The vampires’ (stolen) blood seeps onto the tile, puddling around him.
Billy, slowed by numerous stab wounds, howls in rage at the sight. "You bastards, I'll kill you all!"
"Lisa, go, get Ben out of here," Dean commands. Though at this point, everything is shot pretty much to hell. It’s too late now, Lisa and Ben have both seen horrors Dean can’t erase.
"No."
Dean looks at her increduously. "What the hell do you mean, 'no'? I don't think you know what the hell I've got left to do."
Lisa walks around the kitchen island that separates her and Ben from the carnage across the kitchen.
"I know exactly what you have left to do. I just watched Sam do it. Ben just watched Sam do it. This isn't the first time we've seen this shit go down, Dean, and apparently, it won't be the last. So before that thing starts gnawing on anyone's throat around here, kill the bastard, or I will."
Sam laughs softly, "Blackbird sings at night."
"Damn right," Lisa nods, "but I'd really prefer if someone more experienced did it. I don't want to screw it up, and make, I don't know, a zombie vampire or something."
"Oh for fuck's sake," Dean grunts. Snatching the knife from Sam's loose grip, Dean hauls a struggling Billy over to where the other bodies lay, and cuts off his head.
"Well, then," Lisa sighs, "I'll get the bleach."
~*~
Master Post || Chapter 2