SPN Fic: Stay (2/4, Gen, Pre-Series, R)

[dodger_winslow]

To everyone who asked: No, this isn't a WIP. It's finished, I'm just doing a final polish on it before I post. And when I say final polish, I actually mean an final polish rather than a whole frakking re-write like I ended up doing with the once-finished-but-not-any-longer Seasons. I know this is a final polish simply because I've managed to work through 42 pages without changing my word count by more than a couple of hundred words. This is always my benchmark for when I'm actually done writing a piece as compared to just seeing a man about a horse at a rest stop along the way. If your wondering why the total number of chapters has changed (and may well change again ... there are probably 5 parts to this rather than just 4), that's simply because the LJ word limits screw with me so I always think I can fit more in one post than I actually can.

Title: Stay (2/4)
Author: Dodger Winslow
Genre: Gen, pre-series
Rating: R
Word Count: 30,000
Warnings/Spoilers: Violence, language, mature themes
Disclaimers: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.

Summary: When breakfast on the road takes a deadly turn, Dean is the only one who can save his father's life. He's ten, he's alone, and the only way he makes it is if she stays.

Author's Note: This is a companion piece for Ten Going on Thirteen. While it can stand on it's own, there's significantly more resonance to the story if you read Ten Going on Thirteen first simply because this is an outsider perspective on what happens in that story. Which isn't, as you might expect, what you might think happened. Part 1 is here.

Kelly dropped to her knees, put three fingers on John’s neck to feel for a pulse. It was there - weak and sluggish and thready, but more consistent than she expected. His skin was clammy, and his color was bad; but she was pretty sure he was still conscious. She could see his eyes moving from side to side beneath closed lids.

"John?" she said.

He didn’t respond to her any more than he had to Doll.

"John, if you can hear me, I need you to open your eyes. Can you open your eyes?"

Nothing. She couldn’t tell if it was because he couldn’t hear her, or if he was just concentrating so hard on living he couldn’t be bothered to waste energy doing anything else. Beside her, Doll had gone completely quiet. He seemed calm now, almost like he’d decided to believe this wasn’t really happening.

That couldn’t be good. This couldn’t be the way the story was supposed to end.

Because she wasn’t sure what else to do, and because it didn’t seem like anyone else was doing anything, Kelly reached out and touched Doll’s hand. He flinched; jumped as if she’d scared the hell out of him; started like, until she actually touched him, he didn’t realize she was even there, didn’t realize anyone had come to help him, didn’t realize anyone would.

"Hey, Doll," she said. "You still with me?"

He stared at her for several seconds, his eyes empty, his expression frighteningly blank. He looked like he was thinking about something else entirely, like his mind had wandered away to someplace safer, someplace less horrifying. It was a little freaky how still his face was, how much he looked like he wasn’t even there.

She flashed him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. "Come on, Doll. Don’t give up on me now. It’s been about a century and a half since I was a Girl Scout, so my first aid’s a little rusty here."

He stared at her for another long second, then looked down at pale, blood-washed clench of his dad. "We have to stop the bleeding, or he’s going to die." He said it just that calmly, like he was telling her he wanted syrup with his pancakes, or milk with his little brother’s Fruit Loops.

"Okay," she agreed. "Let’s do that."

But she had no idea how to do that. If she’d ever actually been a Girl Scout, she might have known; but she wasn’t, so she didn’t. Probably direct pressure, she decided. She’d heard something somewhere about putting pressure on a wound being the best way to slow things down. Probably a TV show or something. She got a lot of useful information from TV shows.

"We have to find out where he’s hit," Doll offered.

She glanced at him, nodded her agreement as she lied, "Exactly what I was thinking. Let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very fine place to start."

There was some useful information to be had in musicals, too; or so Sophie used to tell her. Sophie loved musicals. She even took Kelly to a live one once, told her that most soft-hearted thinking was thinking with your twat, but if you could set the whole thing to a good set of notes, it made the whole "being a sucker" thing a little more palatable.

Like a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

Sophie used to sing that to Kelly when she was sick. She’d sing it with great gusto, all the while shoveling the most vile-tasting shit down Kelly’s throat without benefit of any sugar whatsoever. Life isn’t a musical, she’d told Kelly the one time Kelly asked. And she wasn’t Mary Fucking Poppins.

Hands-on love.

Kelly reached out to touch John, to try and figure out where he was shot, where all that blood was coming from. Doll scared the hell out of her by grabbing her wrist, stopping her hand cold. "No," he said. "Don’t go poking around, you’ll only make it worse." That should have sounded panicky, but it didn’t. He was incredibly calm, his voice perfectly level and utterly under control.

Okay, that really couldn’t be good.

She started to say something, then stopped, studied him for a long moment instead. He stared back at her with eyes that had aged twenty years in twenty seconds. The child who begged his father for direction like he thought he could save him if only someone would take pity and tell him how didn’t live here any more. On the other hand, neither did the truculent, ten-year-old twit who clarified he wanted syrup with his pancakes.

In their place was a calm, rational, calculating adult.

"Don’t touch him until we know what we’re doing," Doll told her. Then he looked up, found his brother in Shitty Tipper’s arms. "Sammy, go get me the shotgun. Bring it back. Hurry." His voice sounded more like his father’s than it did his. There was a calm command to it, a cool authority that didn’t brook any room for discussion, let alone argument.

As soon as Sweet Face started wriggling, Shitty Tipper set him down the way only a damn old man would set a terrified kid down when he starts wriggling in your arms. "No, don’t -" Kelly objected, but Sweet Face was already off and moving before she had a chance to say any more than just that.

"No," John whispered. His voice was cracked, barely audible. He shifted, one bloody hand clutching at empty air as his eyes struggled to find their way open. "Pulse. Check first."

Sweet Face stopped, looked to Doll for direction.

Doll grabbed his father’s searching hand, leaned in close and said, "It’s all right, Dad. They’re dead, trust me." His tone was calm, re-assuring when he was talking to John. When he turned to his little brother, that same ten-year-old’s tone turned to cold, inflexible steel. "Go, Sammy. Now."

Sweet Face went.

Doll shoved his dad’s hand at Kelly, saying, "Here. Hold this." As soon as she took the hand-off, he started crawling around John’s clenched body in a slow, tight circle. Studying the twist of his dad like he was some kind of Rubik’s cube - a puzzle to be solved, a challenge to be met - Doll didn’t seem to notice the blood soaking into his jeans, didn’t seem to notice how he was smearing it on the linoleum into something that resembled a butcher house sequence in a low budget slasher flick.

She waited for several seconds before she finally gave in and asked, "What in the hell are you doing, Doll?" It was kind of a stupid question, really - obviously, he was crawling in a circle around his dad’s clenched up body - but it was the only one she had that didn’t sound a whole lot like holy fuck, what did you do with the twit?

Doll looked up, met her eyes. "If we don’t stop the bleeding, he’s going to die," he said again. His voice was so calm it was surreal. It was completely devoid of emotion; he’d put more passion into mimicking her Pig Latin than he did in saying his father was going to die.

"Do you know how to do that?" she asked after a long beat. It was another monumentally stupid question, but what the hell, she was on a roll.

He nodded. "Yeah. I do. But I need help." She saw just a flicker of panic then, just the tiniest spark of something so deep in his eyes it was almost invisible, but not quite. "Okay?"

She frowned. "Okay … what?"

"I need help," he said again. Then, "Okay?"

She got the question then, realized what he was asking her. "Oh. Okay. Sure, Doll. Just tell me what to do."

He nodded. Then, like he was used to getting very specific instructions when he asked what to do, he said, "Keep hold of his hand, but hold onto his shoulder, too. Try to hold it back a little, at least enough to keep him from twisting in. Don’t be afraid you’re going to hurt him. You will, but you can’t let that bother you. I know it’s scary, but you shouldn’t be afraid. There’ll be plenty of time to be afraid later; but right now, I need your help, so you have to buck up and help me."

She could literally hear John in his son’s words. She could literally hear this man speaking to Doll, hear Doll listening in another time, another place.

She realized then that the instructions were for her, but the advice was for him. He was talking to himself in his father’s words, repeating things he’d heard before, telling her what he needed to hear.

Doll looked at Shitty Tipper. His tone was that of a thirty-year-old Marine instead of a ten-year-old twit when he said, "You. Bring me a knife. And matches."

Near Kelly’s knee, John flinched. The snap of Doll’s order startled him, stirred him from the half daze of semi-consciousness into which he’d fallen. He shifted a little, groaned quietly. Kelly squeezed his hand. The pressure seemed to settle him, re-assure him even.

"Mary," he murmured, his voice so low his son didn’t hear it.

She didn’t bother to correct him. Now wasn’t really the time to give Sex Eyes shit about paying attention to something other than her nametag a lifetime ago when flirting seemed like a great way to fuck with the same little twit she was working so hard to hold together like a busted up teacup now.

"And you," Doll snapped at a woman in her twenties who wore her clothes too tight and her hair too short. "Go get some sheets, or napkins, or anything I can use to stop the bleeding."

Doll’s flunkies snapped to like a pair of dogs put to fetch. Kelly shook her head as they scurried off to do his bidding. It hadn’t occurred to her to just tell them what to do rather than expecting them to grow a brain and figure it out for themselves.

The most obvious things were always the ones you missed. In retrospect, she felt a bit like an idiot for failing to see something as clear as the nose on her face.

Doll said something, but she didn’t really hear what it was. She'd lost track of herself suddenly, felt a sudden dislocation of confusion that made her feel like she was missing something she should get, like she didn’t understand something she really ought to know.

It was disturbing. Frightening. Exhausting.

"Hey," Doll said, his tone sharp. "Stay with me here. I need you to pay attention."

She realized with a start he was speaking to her this time. It wasn’t really a reprimand - more of a request flirting with the tone of an order - but it threw her off enough she didn’t respond immediately. Her hesitation impugned his confidence. He faltered. Panic flickered in his eyes again as he asked, "Okay?"

"Uh. Yeah. Sure. Right. Sorry, Doll. Did you say something I missed?"

"I said I can’t see anything this way," he repeated. "I’m going to have to touch him, and he’s going to try to clench up when I do." Doll was staring at her, his voice all business but his eyes full of little boy.

"Got it," Kelly said. "You want me to hold on to him so he doesn’t do that, right? That’s what you were talking about earlier, right? About not being afraid, just buck up and help you, right?"

Her repetition of his own words bolstered him, made him more secure she was with him, that she was following what he was saying and was willing to do what he was telling her to do. "Right," he said. "Buck up. Don’t let a little blood scare you off doing what has to be done."

He looked at her like there was a right answer to that. "Okay," she said, hoping that was the one.

It seemed to be. He nodded, set himself to a course of action. "So okay. Here we go."

Kelly tightened her fingers into John’s hand and shoulder. He was already clenched up, curled around the hidden wound like a man who’d been punched in the gut with a jackhammer and left on the floor to whine about it. But he wasn’t whining. He wasn’t making any noise at all except the quiet, labored gasp of every breath that tore through him.

Because Doll had warned her, she was ready when John groaned, when he tried to curl into himself to defend against Doll’s trembling hands touching him, defend against those hands reaching in to peel blood-soaked flannel off blood-slick skin. She held on, didn’t let him move while Doll probed his gut with cautious fingers, searching for the wound itself. The groan deepened, became a moan. He twisted, tried harder to get away. Kelly held on tighter.

"Sorry, Dad," Doll murmured, his voice grim. "I know it hurts, but I’ve got to do this."

His hands went deeper, started exploring in ways that made his father’s moans shift to guttural whines. Doll ignored the sounds like he didn’t hear them. He kept doing what he was doing, kept poking around in his dad’s blood and guts and God knows what else like he didn’t care that the pressure of his hands was making John tremble with pain, convulsing him in small spasms like he was being beaten with a tire iron, or being run through with a thousand volts of electric hell every two or three seconds.

It had to be a boy thing, Kelly decided. Or an alien-from-outer-space thing. She wasn’t sure which. She wanted to close her eyes so she didn’t have to watch this, but she didn’t. She wasn’t sure what Doll needed from her. She wasn’t sure she could afford to hide from something he was man enough to face head-on.

John spoke suddenly. The words hissed out from behind clenched teeth like he’d held them as long as he could, like he’d done everything in his power not to say what he was saying. "Jesus, Dean. Stop. Stop." His eyes opened, cast around blindly for something to focus on. "Please, son. Just stop."

"I’m almost done, Dad," Doll said. "I’m almost done."

John groaned again. The whisper of it was so low it was more vibration than actual sound. He turned his head away, looked out across the diner itself as Doll kept doing what he was doing. His eyes found their focus. They were staring so hard Kelly had to look to see what he was seeing.

Clutching a gun longer than he was tall, Sweet Face walked with slow, infinite care as he work his way back across the slick diner floor. His feet were unerringly cautious as they navigated the gory mire staining his tennis shoes to a dull, brackish red. His full attention was on the task at hand, both hands clenched white around the gun as he concentrated on getting it to his brother without slipping and falling or dropping it. The gentle sweetness of his guileless smile had become the hard, ferocious determination of a very small, very frightened, very focused little man.

Seeing him that way made Kelly want to close her eyes and hide more than John’s blood did. It made her want to cry, made her want to retch herself dry like someone stupid enough to follow an all-night bender with greasy food and chocolate.

"Good job, Sammy," John said. His voice was little more than a shadow, but his tone intense, as if he was saying something important to a child he might never get a chance to speak to again.

Sweet Face didn’t hear him. He was focused so singularly on what he was doing he couldn’t spare the attention for anything else. He was trying so hard to help save his father he missed the sound of that father struggling to connect, trying to say something that sounded so much like goodbye it made Kelly ache.

By the time Sweet Face reached them, John’s body had gone lax in her hands. He wasn’t struggling any more, wasn’t protesting the pain of Doll’s hands. His eyes were still open, but they’d glazed over, only half focused on the world around him now, only passingly aware of what his sons were doing to try and keep their dad alive.

"This isn’t going to work," Doll announced suddenly. He straightened out of his examination as Sweet Face - Sammy, she reminded herself - set the shotgun carefully to the floor. "I can’t see what I’m doing. We have to get him on his back so I can get to it, so I can stop the bleeding."

"Is he going to die, Dean?" Sammy asked.

Doll looked at his brother, fixed him with a steady gaze. "No," he said firmly. "Dad’s not going to die. I promise, Sammy, okay? He’s not going to die."

He sounded so sure of himself Kelly almost believed it. She could see how much blood was pooled under John’s body - how much more there was now than there had been only a couple of minutes ago - but still, Doll sounded so sure …

Dean, she reminded herself. Dean.

"Okay," Sammy whispered, staring at his brother with such blind, naked faith Kelly was afraid the weight of it might break them both. She put her distraction hat on, asking, "So what now? What do you want us to do, Doll?"

Dean blinked. He looked over at her, then blinked again, blinked several times like he was gathering something he’d almost lost. "We need to get him on his back," he said after a long moment. Then, to John, "Dad? Can you hear me, Dad?"

John didn’t respond. His breathing was slower, more labored. It rattled through him like an inconsistent wind through ill-fitting shutters.

"Dad?" Dean said again. When John still didn’t respond this time, his son just kept talking like he had: "Dad, I need you to roll over. Can you roll over? I need you on your back, okay?"

John shifted a little, but only that.

"Please, Dad." Dean’s voice was intense, a little desperate.

A lot desperate.

John responded to that. His eyes closed, then opened again. He did it slowly, like accomplishing as much was almost more than he could manage. It took him several moments to focus, several more to force his voice to the surface. "What?" he asked finally.

"Can you roll over?" Dean repeated. "I need you on your back so I can see what’s going on."

John closed his eyes. Opened them again.

"I need you, Dad," Dean said again. "I need your help on this."

John swallowed, struggled to focus. "What?" he said again.

"I need you to roll over," Dean said a third time. "Can you roll over, Dad? I need you on your back. Please, Dad. Can you?"

This time, John responded. "I can .. yeah … I think …" He shifted against the floor. One shoulder tucked itself under as his knees lifted, tried to turn his hips. Dean moved in to help, but pain waylaid the effort before they got anywhere close to accomplishing the task at hand.

John’s legs gave out. They fell back to the floor, dragging the rest of his body with them. He gasped a deep, agonized moan of a gasp. His skin blanched and his eyes rolled back in his head. He started trembling harder, his whole body shaking now, like he was so cold he couldn’t stand it. "Fuck," he breathed. "Oh holy fuck."

"It’s okay, Dad," Dean said quickly. "It’s okay. Don’t try again."

"Fuck," John said again. His teeth ground the curse to a shapeless whisper. He was going under, his skin going dull, taking on a waxy sheen as he struggled to hold on, fought to stay with them.

"It’s okay," Dean said again. "Just stay with me. You have to stay with me." His voice was calm, authoritative even, but his eyes were panicking. "I need you to stay with me, okay? You really have to stay with me, Dad."

"Good boy," John whispered. His eyes were closed now. His voice barely cleared his lips. The words were little more than the dry hasp of paper against paper. "Good boy, Dean. Good boy." He wasn’t speaking to his son any more. He wasn’t speaking to anyone. He didn’t look like he even knew what was going on, didn’t look like his eyes were closed so he could concentrate as much as they were closed so he could die.

" I mean it, Dad," Dean said, his tone so sharp you could cut figs with it. "I’m serious. Stick with me. You have to stick with me." He looked around, desperate to find some way to keep his dad from losing his grip and sliding into oblivion. Huddled on his knees several feet away, Sammy was watching their father fade. "Sammy, come here and hold his hand," Dean ordered. "Talk to him. Keep him with us. Make him stay with us."

"You can’t do that to -" Kelly started.

But it was too late. Sammy had already scrambled to his father’s side, already taken up the task as his own. He was in charge of keeping his daddy alive now. It was his job, his mission.

"Get in there, Sammy," Dean instructed. "Hold his hand. Talk to him, and keep talking to him no matter what. Don’t let him go to sleep, okay? Make him stay with us. He has to stay with us, Sammy. He has to stay."

John rallied a little, almost as if he heard the weight Dean was putting on his little brother’s shoulders; as if he understood the danger of charging a six-year-old with the responsibility of keeping his dying father alive.

Kelly handed John’s hand off to Sweet Face. Sammy grabbed him, held on tight.

"Still here," John whispered. "Still with you, son."

"It’s me, Daddy," Sammy told him. "It’s me, Sammy."

"Sammy," John agreed in a slow exhale. He tried to smile but didn’t really make it. Tried to open his eyes; didn’t make that either.

"Stay with me, Dad," Dean said. No, ordered. "You’ve got to stay with me, okay?"

John nodded. It was a negligible motion, but not one that was incidental. "Staying," he managed, coughing wetly to pay the bill for the small victory.

Sammy squeezed in closer to his father’s head. He put his face on John’s, rested his check to John’s cheek. Holding on to his dad’s hand so hard his little fingers turned white with pressure, he whispered into John’s ear, "Stay here, Daddy. Stay here." He made it a mantra, whispered it over and over like a lullaby on an endless loop. "Stay here. Stay here. Don’t go, Daddy, okay? Stay here. You have to stay here."

"Staying," John whispered back. "Staying, Sammy. Staying."

Off to one side, Kelly closed her eyes, felt herself fading. She was tired suddenly, so tired she could hardly think. Listening to Sweet Face’s mantra was breaking her heart. It made her feel like she couldn’t keep going, made her feel like she couldn’t stay here any more, like she had to go just to keep from being crushed by the weight of what she couldn’t do.

This wasn’t what she’d bargained for. This was never part of the pact she made with the universe, never part of what she agreed to take on for the sake of a kid she didn’t even know.

She could feel Sophie staring at her in her memory, feel the urge to run that was reflected in the older woman’s eyes as she stood in the DFS office and stared at a girl she’d never even met; her sister’s daughter, but a relationship that existed in name only. And just as clearly, Kelly could remember her own despair at seeing that look in Aunt Sophie’s eyes. She could remember the hopelessness, the terror, the knowing that this stranger was never going to stay.

Not for her. Not for a child she didn’t even know.

Kelly hadn’t said a single word to Sophie that day. She hadn’t asked her to stay, hadn’t thought for even a moment that she would.

But she did. Sophie stayed.

Kelly opened her eyes, found Doll watching her. He didn’t say a single word to her, didn’t ask her to stay, didn’t think for even a moment that she would.

But she did. Kelly stayed.

"I need help," he said finally. "I need you to help me get him on his back."

She nodded. Right. Fade to nothing later, get John on his back now. Good call, Doll. Way to prioritize.

"Right," she said. "On his back. I think we’re going to need help with that."

Because Shitty Tipper and Crappy Dresser were still scavenging about for the things he’d sent them to find, Dean turned to the only person left. The guy was a regular, too; such a normal guy you wouldn’t really even notice him if you walked past him on the street or crawled by him on a bloody floor.

"You," Dean snapped. "We need some help here."

"Stay here, Daddy," Sammy whispered, his faced pressed to John’s. "Stay here. Stay here. Don’t go. Stay here, Daddy. Stay here …"

John’s eyes were closed. He looked like he was trying to listen, but he wasn’t having much luck with that. He was slipping away by the moment, losing ground, losing his grip on the fragile gossamer of his child’s whispered mantra.

"Get something I can put under his shoulders," Dean ordered. "Like a cushion or something. And something for under his feet, too."

Glad to finally be given a job to do - because obviously, he couldn’t have come up with one on his own - Normal Guy took off to join the scavenger hunt. Shitty Tipper was back with a small tin of wooden matches and a huge, butcher knife. He set them beside the shotgun near Dean’s knee, then asked, "Now what?" He sounded like an enthusiastic puppy ready for a new set of fetch orders.

Dean just looked at him like he’d asked for the meaning of life and the cure for the common cold in the same question.

Crappy Dresser was still unaccounted for, but Normal Guy was already Johnny-on-the-spot with two cushions he’d torn off their backing in nearby booths. Dropping his booty to the bloody floor beside the matches, Normal Guy took his place next to Shitty Tipper, echoing Shitty’s question, "Yeah. Now what?"

Dean’s gaze shifted to Normal Guy, looking at him the same way he’d looked at Normal’s partner in nitwittery. For a long moment, the only sound in the diner was John’s labored breathing and the quiet whisper of his six-year-old’s determined mantra: "Stay here, Daddy. Stay here. Stay here. Don’t go. Stay here, Daddy. Stay here …"

"Doll?" Kelly called after several long beats of nothing.

Dean didn’t respond. It was as if he’d hit a gap in his programming or something; like he’d gone into eternal load mode but wasn’t actually loading anything at all. He was just sitting there, spinning the cursor behind his eyes to the tune of forever until someone realized he wasn’t responding and performed a hard reboot to put him back in touch with the capacity to think, to speak, to act.

Evidently, two grown men looking to him for new orders wasn’t something he could entirely process. He’d been more than capable of sending them off on their initial missions; but there was something about middle-aged idiots just standing there, looking to him for direction, expecting him to issue new orders to send them on their way that threw Doll’s ten-year-old logic circuits out of alignment, froze him up with a "does not compute" error message he couldn’t get past.

"Doll?" Kelly said again, a little louder. And then, "Dean?"

He flinched at the sound of her voice on his real name. His blank gaze shifted, found its way to her.

"On his back, right?" Kelly prompted. "You just want us to turn him over then?"

Dean blinked. He looked at his dad, then back at her. "Yeah. Let’s turn him over." His brain kicked in; his eyes came back to life. "Put him on his back," he said definitively. "Sammy, you need to move. You two, get in here."

Sammy released his dad’s hand and crawled away as the four of them moved in to take his place. John didn’t move when they touched him, didn’t respond as they established grips on his knees and shoulders.

"Should I help?" Sammy asked.

"No," Dean answered. "Stay clear until we get him turned." Then to his minions, he said, "On three. And be careful. Don’t twist him up, or let go of him. This is gonna hurt, so he’s probably gonna fight some, so don’t drop him. If you drop him, I’ll kick your ass into next Sunday." Under different circumstances, Kelly would have laughed, not only at the threat, but at how much that threat actually intimidated two grown men taking a ten-year-old at his literal word. "One, two, three …"

Together, they rolled John to his back.

Dean was right. The moment they started moving him, John started to fight. He snapped back to awareness like someone lit him up with gasoline and a blowtorch, convulsing, twisting, hissing his way through a rosary’s worth of blasphemous profanities that impressed even her, which was pretty hard to do, because she was a master of stringing multiple profanities into long, expressive, eloquent diatribes on the subject of whatever was pissing her off at any given moment. But John’s ferocious outburst made her look like a dilettante by comparison. It also scared the hell out of both Shitty Tipper and Normal Guy. On pain of ass-kicking, however, they set John carefully to the floor before skittering away like the pansy-ass bitches they were.

John’s eyes were open now, working hard to focus, working to figure out what was going on, and where his son was.

"That’s a hundred and fifty dollars to the curse kitty, Dad," Dean said, already peering at his dad’s wound, already focused on what he was supposed to be doing.

John responded with something between a snort and a laugh. His breathing was ragged - a tangible effort to pull air in and push it out again - but he was still with them enough to laugh at his son’s twitty sense of humor. Still with them enough to get it, to understand it and appreciate it for what it was.

That bolstered Dean, gave him confidence. He looked up, met his dad’s eyes. "Get one of those cushions and put it under his shoulders," he told Normal Guy. "Prop him up so he can breath easier. And elevate his feet, too. I don’t want him going into shock."

"Good boy," John said, his lips forming the words even though he didn’t actually speak them out loud.

"It’s okay, Dad," Dean said as Sammy crawled back in and picked John’s hand up to hold it again. "You’re going to be okay."

"Good boy," John said again, another silent approval spoken only in the motion of lips that couldn’t manage the effort it was to speak. His eyes fell shut. His expression slipped a little farther away.

Dean went back to his precursory examination of the wound. He could see where bloody flannel was sucked to skin now, but the jagged hole torn in the shirt had shifted to one side enough that the wound itself was still hidden from view.

"Sammy, go find out what’s taking so long with the napkins," Dean ordered.

Sammy looked up, stricken. "Shouldn’t I stay and hold Dad’s hand?"

"I’ll go," Kelly offered. She was already half way to her feet when Dean reached out, grabbed her wrist and dragged her back down to her knees. He held on, didn’t let her go as he told his brother, "You can do that in a minute, Sammy. But right now, I need those napkins, okay?"

"Okay," Sammy said in a small voice. He looked lost, looked like he wasn’t sure how to do what his brother wanted him to do.

"Try in the kitchen, Sweet Face," Kelly said. "There are some cupboards in there that are just about you tall. They should have cloth napkins in them. They might not be right in front, but they’re in there. You just have to dig around a little, okay? Like hide and seek, or an Easter egg hunt."

Sammy nodded. "Okay." More secure in what he was supposed to do, Sammy leaned closed to his dad and said, "I’ll be right back, Daddy. Don’t go anywhere. Stay here, okay? Stay right here, and I’ll be right back, I promise."

John’s eyes were still shut, but he managed a whisper when his lips moved this time, saying, "Right here, Sammy. Right here."

Sammy nodded, satisfied, then shoved John’s hand at Kelly. "Here," he said. And just like that, she had John’s hand again while his six-year-old skittered away, sliding on the blood-slick linoleum but keeping his balance through slips that would have put her - along with pretty much any other adult on the planet - to her ass. He was probably some kind of skateboard wizard or something, she decided. Maybe that’s why the blood didn’t seem bother him; because he was some kind of miniature daredevil who was always falling off handrails and landing on his head.

Despite the fact that she once again had custody of John’s hand, Dean kept his own grip onto her other wrist. His fingers were actually bruising her, he was holding on that tight. "Hey." She shook her arm a little. "Lighten up, Francis."

Dean stared at her for a long second, then said, "Don’t leave me, okay? I need you here, not someplace else."

That surprised her. "I’m right here, Doll," she said.

"I mean it." His grip tightened more, his fingers dug in deeper. "Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me."

"All right," she agreed. "I won’t leave you."

"You can’t," he said again. "You really, really can’t, okay?"

"I won’t."

"You have to promise you won’t. You have to promise you won’t leave me. You have to promise." He was staring at her so hard it almost hurt.

"I promise, Doll," she said quietly

He stared at her for several more seconds, then finally nodded. "Okay." But he still didn’t let her go. It was almost like he couldn’t let her go, like he was afraid to let her go for fear she would.

"I’m not going anywhere," she assured him. "Cross my heart and hope to die." And then she did: crossed her heart with one bloody finger, putting an X right on her tee-shirt, directly over her heart.

"Okay," he said again. But he was still staring at her so hard. It took several more seconds before he finally relented, before he finally believed the promise she made, believed her when she said she wouldn’t leave.

That she’d stay.

Once he did - once he could make himself believe her, trust her - he let go and went back to trying to get a look at his father’s wound. John’s breathing had eased a little since they propped his head and shoulders up; but the intensity of the pain was drawn in corded muscles along his neck and jaw. His arm was braced tight against his body, one hand clenched to a fist that shook with the isometric pressure of fingers fighting one another to the end of controlling something almost beyond control. He didn’t look like he was conscious, but he wasn’t fully unconscious either. As far as she could tell, he was somewhere in between, concentrating on just living to the exclusion of everything else.

Dean used both hands to peel his dad’s shirt away from his side, then to wipe at his skin to get a better look at the ugly wound pulsing fresh, bright blood with every beat of his heart. It looked almost fake, it was that fucking horrific. And it was an ass-load bigger than she expected - a jagged rupture almost the size of a man’s fist directly above John’s right hip.

She’d never seen anything this bad, this gory. Pound for pound on the gore-meter, it was ten times worse than seeing Shotgun Guy’s head come apart right in front of her eyes. It seemed more real than that, more intimate. More like it was actually happening instead of being some kind of over-blown special effect, something she should cheer like it was a movie rather than fall away from, like the bullet that tore him apart could do the same thing to her.

"Oh my God," Kelly whispered. "It never looks like that on TV."

"It’s an exit wound. Always makes a bigger hole coming out than it does going in." Dean’s voice was calm, informative as he pried his dad’s arm away just enough to see what was under it. "The bullet must have caught him in the back, but this is why he’s bleeding so bad … because it’s an exit wound."

"It is so fucked that you know that," she told him.

"Fuck is a dollar in the curse kitty," Dean said without looking up.

"It is so screwed that you know that," she corrected.

He did look up then, gave her a weak smile as he said, "But that’s good though, too. No bullet inside is mostly good. It means all we have to do is stop the bleeding. I need something to use as a compress." His gaze flicked around the diner, then came back at her. "Can you take your shirt off?"

The question caught her so completely flat-footed she wasn’t sure for a moment that she’d heard him right. "What?" she asked finally

"I need your shirt," he clarified. "To apply direct pressure."

She blinked at him. "You’re kidding, right?"

But he wasn’t kidding. There wasn’t a kidding bone in his entire body. "I need a compress," he said again like that explained something. His eyes had that one-second-short-of-panic look to them again, and he was staring at her, expecting her to fix it.

By taking off her shirt.

"Okay?" he said.

God, sometimes she hated ten-year-olds. "Okay. Sure. Fine. Whatever." Kelly grabbed her tee-shirt and jerked it out of her jeans, preparing to whip it over her head at the request of a damn ten-year-old who had an issue with being called Doll.

She was half way through doing exactly that when he said, "Wait. Never mind. Here comes Sammy."

Oh, God bless Sammy. And God bless Dean for being ten instead of thirteen, because three years down the road, the "wait, never mind" would have never happened until after her shirt was off, even if Sammy had been standing right there next to him with thirty-three tee-shirts worth of napkins.

Kelly pulled her shirt back into place as Sammy handed his brother two handfuls of white cotton napkins. "Where’d the chick with the spiky hair go?" Dean asked as he took them.

"She’s in the kitchen," Sammy said. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "She’s crying."

"Is she hurt?"

Sammy shook his head. "Just scared I think."

"Scared?" Dean repeated, his voice filled with ten-year-old disbelief. "Are you serious?"

Sammy nodded.

Dean snorted. "Girls," he muttered, his tone one of pure disgust. He turned back to his father.

John stirred at the sound of Sammy’s voice. His eyes struggled to open again, but they didn’t make it.

"Dad?" Dean called quietly. "Can you hear me, Dad?"

He did get them open then, focused slowly on Dean, saw the napkins in his son’s hands but didn’t see what they were for. "Still here," he muttered dully.

Sammy dropped to his knees, scooted in close again. "I’m back, Daddy," he said. "See? I told you I’d be right back, and I’m back just like I said."

John’s gaze tracked slowly, finding Sammy, focusing. "Missed you," he whispered.

Sammy’s whole body lit up with happy. He reached out to take John’s hand back from Kelly, but Dean interrupted his intention by saying, "Not yet, Sammy. Wait a minute."

Sammy obeyed without question. "I’ll hold your hand again in a minute, Dad," he said. "But not yet, okay? Just a minute more though. Just a part of a minute even."

"This is gonna hurt, Dad," Dean said.

John swallowed in a way that was almost a nod. Almost permission to go, almost acceptance of what was coming. He never took his eyes off Sammy, never looked at Dean as his son pressed a handful of napkins tight against the wound.

John curled up around the pressure. His teeth clenched; his lips pulled to the agonized tight of "gonna hurt" times a thousand. He looked like he was trying to bite himself to silence; but it wasn’t working. The noises he made in the back of his throat were devastating. They made Kelly want to run and hide in the kitchen with Crappy Dresser, made her want to cry herself into a well-earned disgusted eyeroll from a ten-year-old twit.

She could only imagine what those sounds were doing to his sons.

"I’m sorry, Dad," Dean whispered as he pushed napkins under John’s arm, then put more on top of those. "I’m so sorry." His hands were shaking, but his voice wasn’t when he called for his brother: "Come here, Sammy. Put your hands right here. Push in and hold it tight, okay?"

Sammy hesitated. The quiet whines keening through his dad were de-stabilizing his world. He’d gone almost as pale as John, but it only took a couple of seconds for him to gather up more courage than Crappy Dresser had in her whole family to crawl under Dean’s arm and put both small hands exactly where Dean indicated they should go.

"Hold it tight," Dean said again, then pulled his own hands away, leaving John’s wound in the custody of his six-year-old son.

Kelly reached forward, saying, "Let me do that, honey."

"No," Dean’s tone was firm, authoritative. "Sammy knows what he’s doing. He’ll do it right." Bolstered by his brother’s faith, Sammy nodded, re-affirming he was up to the task. "Hold it as tight as you can," Dean told him. "You have to push in, kind of like you’re leaning on him, okay?"

Sammy nodded again. His hands pressed harder against the napkins, pushing them deeper into John’s side as Dean turned away. John actually cried out at that. He gasped like he couldn’t breathe, then gritted his teeth against curses that came through anyway.

Sammy started crying. "I’m sorry, Daddy," he said. "I’m sorry. I’m sorry." Tears rolled down his face, but he didn’t take his hands off the napkins to wipe them away.

"You’re doing fine, Sammy," Dean said without looking up from what he was doing. He had the shotgun broken open on the floor, was pulling out the shells Shotgun Guy had jacked into the chamber before he lost his head. "Just keep doing it, no matter what, okay?" He pushed the gun away, but kept the shells.

"Okay," Sammy whispered. "Okay, Dean. Okay."

John’s breathing was torn with pain, but he struggled against showing it, fought against letting his son see what the pressure of small hands directly on the wound was doing to him. His hand moved, covered Sammy’s. "T’s okay, Sammy," he managed thickly. "I’m okay, son." His words were slurred. His shoulders were shaking. Though Sammy was the one maintaining the pressure, the presence of his father’s hand seemed to take the terror out of it, seemed to re-assure him he wasn’t killing the man he was trying to help save.

The napkins soaked through in less than a minute. They became a horror movie parody of Christmas napkins while John kept saying. "T’s okay, Sammy. T’s okay, buddy. T’s okay." His voice had gone quiet, far way. He wasn’t even trying to open his eyes any longer. His hand went lax where it rested over his son’s.

Dean had one of the shotgun shells wedged against the side of his knee. He was holding the metal end with his free hand and sawing on the casing with the butcher knife. When John’s voice got to quiet too hear, he called, "Dad? You still with me, Dad?"

"T’s okay, Sammy," John muttered. "T’s okay, buddy. T’s okay."

Dean looked up from what he was doing. He fixed Kelly with a look of ferocious expectation and asked, "How much longer until help gets here?"

"I don’t know, Doll. We’re kind of in the boonies, and 9-11 can be really slow to respond - "

"Did anyone even call?" Normal Guy asked.

The question scared Dean. It distracted him enough that the blade of his knife caught, jerking the shell away from his knee and squirting it across the slick linoleum. "What?!?" he demanded, his voice a terrified shadow.

"I just … I mean …" Normal Guy blinked at him, then looked at Kelly. "I didn’t call," he said after a beat. "Did you?"

It took every ounce of willpower she had not to scream at him, not to remind the stupid bastard he was looking right at her when she scrambled past him on her way to the back of the diner and told him to call. A fucking. Ambulance. She should have realized by the way he never responded that he didn’t hear her - that he didn’t even see her - but it hadn’t occurred to her no one else would think to do the obvious.

"Did anyone?" Normal Guy asked, shifting the question to Shitty Tipper.

Kelly struggled to make sense of what he was suggesting. It was such a fucking joke when some idiot yelled the obvious on a TV show in response to the world exploding around them into mayhem and violence: "Call 9-11!" Like that even needed to be said. Like everybody and their dog wouldn’t do that first, before they even thought about doing anything else.

The most obvious things were always the ones you miss.

Dean was staring at Normal Guy, his face a mask of utter disbelief. For a moment, he didn’t move. Then, almost like he’d decided not to deal with it, Dean shook himself and scrambled after the runaway shell. He grabbed the casing and jammed it back against his knee. When he started sawing again, his whole being was focused on that task and only that task.

"Well, I didn’t," Shitty Tipper offered after several seconds. He looked in the direction of the kitchen and asked, "Did she?"

"Well let’s take a fucking poll, guys," Kelly snarled. "One of you get off your fucking ass and call already."

Normal Guy blinked. "I’ll do it."

"Great. Go do that. Now. Right now."

Normal Guy turned around, started toward the front of the diner.

Dean’s knife caught again, jerked the shell free a second time. He chased it down, wedged it back in place and kept going.

"Doll?’ she said gently.

"No." He shook his head, his whole focus on a shell casing he’d barely managed to score. "No. Just … no." The knife nicked the side of his hand. He didn’t notice.

"What are you doing, Doll?" she asked. "Tell me what you’re doing so I can help."

"Be aggressive," he told her. "Think smart, don’t think scared."

She had no idea what that meant.

"Dean," John whispered, his voice was so desiccated it barely prevailed over the labor of shallow breathing. "Dean."

"Just a minute, Dad."

"Tell me what you’re doing," she said again.

"Where’s the phone?" Normal Guy called from over near the register stand.

The shell squirted free a third time, and Dean lost it. "Goddammitsonofabitchmotherfuckerhellbitchwhore!" His voice broke with frustration. He hung his head; his shoulders began to shake.

Kelly didn’t take her eyes off the child coming apart in front of her as she answered Normal Guy: "Under the counter." The escaped shell casing rolled to a stop near her ankle. She picked it up, held it out to him. "Tell me what you’re doing, Dean," she said.

"Dean," John whispered again.

"Just a minute, Dad," Dean answered as he had before. His voice was quiet but stable. There was no emotion to it, nothing to reflect the way his shoulders were starting to heave, the way his hands had started to shake.

"I think you owe the curse kitty your allowance for the next couple of weeks," she said.

He didn’t respond.

"Oh, fuck!" Normal Guy swore from up near the front counter. Kelly glanced his direction, saw him stumbling back from where Ted was splattered all over the wall behind the register stand. "There’s a body back here," he announced, his face blanched to an I’m-going-to-puke-my-guts-up color.

"No shit, Sherlock," she said. "Welcome to the party. Now get back there and call somebody."

When she returned her attention to Doll, he’d looked up; he was watching her. The blood on his face was streaked with tears, but he wasn’t making a sound, wasn’t showing anyone but her that he was crying.

"At the rate we’re going, you’re going to be able to buy a car with that curse kitty," she told him.

This time, he did respond. "I don’t need a car," he said. "My dad’s going to give me the Impala some day."

"Sweet."

He looked down at the shell in her hand, then back up at her. "Can you hold it for me?" he asked.

Yeah. That was what she wanted to do: hold a two-inch long shotgun shell against blood-slick linoleum while an aggressive ten-year-old sawed at it with a big, fucking butcher knife. That was right at the top of her list of things she wanted to do today, edging out having an enormous gun shoved in her face at the wire for the win.

"Sure," she said.

Putting the shell down on the floor, she braced it as best she could without putting any more fingers in the red zone than she absolutely had to. As Dean put the butcher knife to the casing, she took the opportunity to say a little prayer just to remind God she wasn’t a starfish, and He’d neglected to include the whole regeneration thing in the Human genome when He was cooking up the original recipes.

Not that she was complaining. Just reminding.

Dean finished sawing through the casing she was holding. She set it aside, and he handed her another one. "It’s okay," he said as he watched her brace it against the floor. "I’m not going to cut you."

She gave him a weak smile she intended to convey "never thought you would" but she knew probably actually told him "good to fucking know." John mumbled something as Dean put his knife on the new casing, but she was too singularly focused on the fate of her fingers to listen.

"Dad told me to tell you it’s not enough," Sammy said as his brother started to saw again.

"I know," Dean said. He didn’t look up, didn’t slow down. "I’m working on it."

With her holding and him cutting, it went much faster. He finished the second casing and started in on the last one.

"What’s he mean?" Kelly asked. "What’s not enough?"

"He’s too tore up to wait," Dean answered quietly. "He wants to make sure I saw that, make sure I’m not stupid enough to think pressure’s going to be enough."

"Enough for what?" she asked.

"He knows I know that," Dean said rather than actually answering the question she asked. "He doesn’t think I’m stupid, he just wants to make sure I saw everything. Better twice told than missed. That’s the rule. Never get mad at somebody for telling you something you already know. Not even if it’s obvious. Not even if you’d have to be stupid to miss it or not understand what it means."

"I don’t know what it means," she said quietly.

"That’s okay. I do. He knows I do. He was just telling me to be sure."

"So … is your dad a cop or something?" she ventured after a beat. "Or a spy? Or a soldier? Or Superman, maybe?"

He glanced up at her.

"Hey," she chided, "don’t look at me: watch what you’re doing."

He returned his attention to the shell casing. "Superman’s a weenie," he said. "Batman rules."

"Batman, huh? So your dad’s Batman?"

"Yeah," he said. "Kinda."

"So that makes you Robin?"

He shook his head. "Sammy’s Robin. And the Impala’s the Batmobile. Dad and I have it all worked out. We talk about stuff like that. Sammy’s a Star Trek geek, but Dad likes Batman like me." He made a small sound in the back of his throat, but cut it off before it turned into anything else. "We have it all figured out," he said again.

"So what does that make you?" she asked after a long beat of silence.

"I’m Dean," he said.

"Just Dean?"

"Yeah."

"Like Dean Martin?"

"No."

"Dean-o was the cool one," she informed him.

"He used to call me that when I was a kid."

"The cool one?" she asked.

He smiled a little. "No. Dean-o. He called me that when I was a kid. But I’m just Dean now." He finished sawing through the last casing and set the knife aside.

"Not Doll?" she asked as he handed her the shell near his knee.

"He doesn’t call me Doll," Dean said. "Only you call me that."

"My Aunt Sophie used to call me Doll," she offered as he picked up one of the other shells and started pulling things out of it.

"Take out the shot and the wadding," he told her.

She looked down at the shell casing in her hand. "Huh?"

"All the shit in there except the powder," he clarified. Then he added, "I mean stuff. All the stuff except the powder." He was already finished with his, so instead of giving her a chance to comply, he just traded her shells. "Never mind. Here. Hold this; I’ll do it. Don’t spill it." He removed the shot and wadding from the second shell and handed that to her, too. As he repeated the procedure with the third, he said, "He used to be a Marine."

"Your dad?"

"Batman was rich. They probably would have made him be in the National Guard or something, so he never joined up. But Dad did. He was a Marine just like his dad used to be. And like Pastor Jim. He and Pastor Jim were in the Marines together." He handed her the last shell casing, looked her straight in the eyes when he said, "He’s been shot before, so this is nothing for him. He’s been shot lots of times."

"Okay," she said.

"He’s not going to die," Dean clarified for her.

"Right," she agreed.

"We just have to stop the bleeding is all. Then he’ll be fine."

"Absolutely."

Dean just looked at her.

She waited for a long moment, then said, "I have no idea what we’re doing, Doll."

"That’s okay," he assured her. "I do. He showed me how to do this once. Not on a person, but he drew pictures and stuff. He said never, ever, ever do it unless I had to; but it’s the way to go if you don’t have any other choice. Better to go down swinging, he says. That means, like, in baseball when you don’t just let a pitch go by if it’s the last one, and you know it’s a strike. Even if you don’t think you can hit it, you should still swing because otherwise you’re out for sure. So you should always at least try. Marines always try. Army guys don’t always try, but Marines do. That’s what Dad says. That Marines always at least try. They go down swinging."

And then he just looked at her again.

"Okay," she said finally. "Let’s go down swinging then."

"But only if it’s the last one," Dean clarified. "Only if you don’t have any other choice."

She realized he was asking her a question then. Realized the calm in his eyes was nothing but a mask for absolute terror. She glanced around, looked at all the blood on the floor, and then at John, lying stone still next to his six-year-old, his skin frighteningly grey, his breathing frighteningly shallow.

"Like now," Dean prompted. Then he said, "Right?"

She looked at him, met his gaze squarely. "I don’t see any other choice, Doll."

He nodded. "Okay. Me neither." But still he stayed where he was, staring at her.

"So let’s do it then," she said finally.

He nodded again. "Okay. I think so, too." He turned back to his father, crawled up close to him and said, "Okay, Sammy. Move your hands."

"But -" Sammy started.

"Just do it."

Sammy obeyed. He released his napkin pressure bandage to Dean’s care and scrambled out of the way. Dean closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and went straight to work.

Part 3