Made of Earth - Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Dean dropped Ben off at the Before/After Care Center where all good little children of the citizens of Republica went during their day. He handed off his son to a woman dressed in gray, with pale pink lips, white teeth and a fake smile. She was beautiful, long blonde curls that reminded Dean of his mother, bright, round eyes like crystal orbs. Any woman who had a job worked in childcare, as a school teacher, or a secretary. Typists or nurses. Real old school, like how it was on the old TV shows like Leave it to Beaver and I Love Lucy. Men were men, women were women and that’s how it was. Even in public attire. Dean wore a damn suit and tie out in public, his matching hat sitting in the car.
“We’ll have lots of fun today, won’t we Ben?” Ben tried clutching to the collar of Dean’s leather jacket as he passed Ben off to the woman. The tag on her drab uniform read, Jessica M.
He fussed and chanted. “Dada, dada, dada.” And he reached.
“Sorry, buddy,” Dean answered, his voice catching in his throat. It was the same thing every day. He gave him a kiss and quickly walked back to the car, trying to ignore the wailing. If he could, he’d keep Ben strapped to him all day, through his shift at the auto shop, through his second job working construction on the highway.
In his Impala (inherited from John which is the only way someone like Dean would have been able to afford a car like that), Dean paused at the steering wheel, watching the building. It used to be a library. Dean’s mother used to take him and Sam there every Thursday for story time. But there weren’t really libraries anymore, not like they used to be and not usually for the general public.
He didn’t know what went on in the Care Center, not really. But they had been set up for a while, making good little citizens of the new generation. Dean imagined some sort of play, and some sort of pre-education for toddlers before real school started. Not a lot of young kids; since married women didn’t work, they could stay home and attend to their motherly duties. Dean had been reluctant to leave his son for so many hours in a day in facility run by the government that ruined everyone’s lives. But Sam worked long hours, Lisa was gone, and as much as Dean would trust his life to Cas, he didn’t trust him alone with a baby.
Ben adored Cas and vice-versa, but Castiel could barely manage himself, much less a baby who just mastered walking and liked to grab anything he could get his little hands onto.
Dean started the car, slightly comforted by the purr of the engine, momentarily taking him back to childhood, sitting in the back seat with baby Sammy in his car seat and tickling his feet while John drove and Mary sang along with the Beatles cassette tape. He checked his watch and pulled out of the parking lot. Off to two different jobs to pay for that fucking back surgery he didn’t even ask for.
~
Dean was in a wheelchair for three years before the mandatory body restorations went into effect. So the new nation could show the rest of the world they were powerful, that the people united under the new country weren’t weak, that they were better than ever.
He wasn’t too distraught about being in the chair. Sam built ramps and lowered shelves around the apartment; he paid good money to have the car modified so Dean could still drive. And Dean was in the chair for good reason. He saved Sam from being shot during a small uprising riot. Dean got a bullet in the back shoving Sam out of the way.
The riots weren’t all the time, but the sprung up every few months. And when the Authority started advertising the surgeries, Sam offered, Sam begged because he couldn’t stand seeing Dean in the chair, always felt like it was his fault.
“Drop it, Sammy,” Dean said, taking a beer from the fridge in the apartment that they shared. Cas sat on the coffee table in the living room with a sketchpad on his lap, pressing it down on his knees, fervently drawing. When he drew or painted, it was particularly hard to grab his attention.
Sam followed Dean to the living room. Cas ignored them. Sam sat on the couch, Dean parked his chair next to it. “It’s not really that much and I’ve been saving-”
“No.” Dean pressed the bottle down on the end table. Cas finally looked up. “No. That’s for you, just forget it, okay?” His eyes set on Sam and he tried to look as serious as possible. His jaw fixed, nostrils flared.
Sam shook his head and got up, grabbing his coat from the hook on the wall. He slammed the door on his way out. Dean sighed and peeled at the frayed label on the bottle. Castiel shuffled on the table a bit, but didn’t say anything.
“What are you drawing?” Dean asked, tapping Cas’ knee.
He pulled the book close to his chest and stuck the pencil behind his ear. “Nothing.”
“Come on, Cas, you used to show me all your stuff when we were kids.”
Reluctantly, Cas revealed the sketchpad. A large bridge with a woman in white standing at the top of it, leaning over the railing. Her dress flowing in the wind like her hair, twisted with ribbons and flowers. “It’s beautiful,” Dean told him.
“Thanks.” He pursed his lips and looked out the window, the same distant look in his eyes that had been with since Dean could remember. “Dean,” he said after a while.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”
Dean exhaled soft through his nose and took a long swing from the bottle. Beer didn’t taste the same as it used to. “I can’t walk, Cas.”
“I know. And I’m sorry that you can’t. but, I don’t think that you need to be fixed.”
Dean was close enough that when Cas leaned forward, their heads pressed together. Dean closed his eyes and inhaled slow, then reached to touch Cas’ knees. Cas didn’t make him feel broken, he didn’t stare or give pity.
Dean pulled back. “Thanks, Cas.”
Six months later, when the body restorations came along, Dean didn’t think much of it, until he received a letter from the Authority telling him that if he didn’t get his condition repaired within three months, he would be fined, and being fine meant you might as well kiss your entire hard earned cash goodbye.
So Sam took Dean to the hospitals and the doctors put him under and took out the bullet and repaired his wire-ripped spine. He woke up in recovery, a yellow lit room with green walls, a small tube stuck in his nose giving him fresh and pure oxygen.
In his haze, Dean glanced around the room searching for Sam, but finding only his coat over a chair and three Styrofoam cups of coffee sitting on the tray by Dean’s bed. And Castiel, on the other side of the room, one hand clutched around his ear. He was whispering something and shaking his head, staring into the tree outside the window.
“Cas,” he croaked.
Cas turned and dropped his arm. His normally forlorn face lit up, a rare smile. He moved across the room and sat in the chair with Sam’s coat. “Doctors have been coming to check on you every half hour or so. You’re still going to be a little out of it.”
“Oh yeah,” Dean agreed, pressing his head back into the pillow. “I am feeling…great.” He smirked and reached his hand over for Cas’.
A few days later, Dean wiggled his toes and shifted his legs under the sheets. The week after that, he took his first steps with Sam and Cas watching and after twelve weeks of physical therapy, he was walking almost on his own. He carried a cane for a while to keep his balance.
Nine months later, he went into the marriage pool and met Lisa.
~
“Dean, you got a phone call.” Bobby knocked Dean in the boots as Dean worked under a car. Dean pulled himself out on the creeper. Bobby stood over him and dropped him a rag to clean the oil off his hands.
“From who?”
“Who do you think?”
Dean stood and looked at the giant clock on the wall, then back to Bobby who held onto the phone. “Can’t have him calling here every day.” But it had been going on for two years.
“I know.” He finished cleaning off his hands and took the phone from Bobby. He patted Dean on the shoulder before walking back to the office. The government let him keep his auto body repair shop after everything had settled and businesses were rebuilt. That’s how they tried to keep people happy and complacent. Kept certain things normal, old fashioned. Auto shops and car washes. Ma and Pa stores in small towns. Gas stations stocked with cigarettes and Authority controlled magazines.
“Cas,” Dean said.
“I’m sorry,” Cas answered. “But it’s three o’clock.”
“I know.”
“The dryer…”
Dean could see Castiel on the other end of the line in the apartment, pacing back and forth in the hallway by the utility closet that held their stacked washer and dryer units. When they were kids, Michael and Gabriel thought it would be real funny to stick their baby brother in the dryer in the basement while the washer ran. Dean found him about an hour later when he and Sam came over, crying about how the washer was going to kill him. Then he was afraid of the dryer in the Winchester basement. He thought it was talking to him and threatening to eat everyone.
“I know, Cas,” Dean sighed. “I know. Just close the door and the closet, and go sit on the couch. Watch TV or draw.”
“Okay, Dean,” he said. If phones still had cords, Castiel would be twirling it around his finger. He was probably twisting his hair. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
Dean shook his head. “Not a bother. Sam will be home soon, and I’ll be home tonight with Ben.”
“Okay.” And he just hung up.
Dean rubbed the end of the phone against his temples, kicked against the concrete wall. Bobby had come out of the office, standing to his left, a wrench in one hand, a rag in the other. “He ain’t getting any better, is he?”
Anyone who knew Castiel knew he was weird. But only the family, Dean and Sam, and Bobby knew that it was affecting his everyday life. Cas didn’t really leave the apartment, and if he wasn’t there, he was at Anna’s. He had no job, no ambition. Just his painting and sketches.
Dean scratched his neck. “I don’t know what to do about him.”
“You know if they find out-”
“Of course I know,” Dean snapped. He didn’t need reminding.
Mental restoration had become mandatory too. No one walking around with depression or multiple personality disorder. No more ADD or schizophrenia. But you can’t just fiddle around inside the brain without consequence. After Mrs. Milton and Lisa, everyone just kept their damn mouths shut about Cas and kept him away from any kind of attention.
“Sorry, boy,” Bobby replied.
Dean scratched at his neck again, his nail running over a scab. “Look Bobby, I gotta finish this.”
“Sure.” Bobby tried to smile, but just took the phone with him back to the office. He lost just as much as anyone else, his wife killed during a political protest.
Dean lost himself under the car, with a wrench and bolts, fixing the car the way he couldn’t fix himself.
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