SPN: All the Way to the Bottom of the Wishing Well [Ben]
Title: “All the Way to the Bottom of the Wishing Well”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: future!fic [spoilers for 6x21, “Let It Bleed”]
Summary: Ben is off to do some soul-searching. And some people-searching. And to kill some bad things along the way.
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke, CW, etc. Title from “The Wishing Well” by The Airborne Toxic Event.
A/N: I talked to jayazz, and this one wrote itself. I don’t even… ugh.
ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM OF THE WISHING WELL
Ben doesn’t have a father. But that’s okay. That’s just how things roll with him and Mom. Sometimes she lets men into her life, but it never lasts. Some of them, Ben misses; others, not so much. Some don’t even get past the first week. He can’t even remember their names.
But that’s the trouble with Ben: there are many things he can’t remember lately.
--
One of them - Matt? Paul? Josh maybe? - takes Ben on a hunting trip. Mom freaks out. Yells at him not to do it again, and Ben loses the count of the never-evers in her speech, but she’s not even out of breath yet. She can pull off bitchy like no other when she puts her mind to it. Ben watches her with tired eyes.
“What’s gotten into you?” he asks at the first chance he gets to pipe in. “It’s not like it was a bear or something.”
Her anger fades like sunshine on a rainy day. She takes a seat on the bed before him and looks at him with an air of strange sadness, probably thinking typical motherly things: like how much he’s grown up and all that.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs.
Ben guesses they won’t be seeing MattPaulJosh any time soon.
--
Ben fights at school sometimes. He’s got moves and he likes showing them off, but it’s not even that. He’s long past being bullied, too. Fighting gives him something that he has no name for, something that is stored beyond all the little things he cannot remember.
--
Ben is sixteen when he ices his first… weird nasty thing with teeth and claws. He does it at school, after hours, in the workshop. Lots of sharp objects there. Blood splatters all over the walls and all over Ben. He shivers from fear and anger and wants to look away, but he watches anyway as the thing bleeds and dies. He wonders vaguely how to get all those stains off of his clothes because Mom will be sure to notice.
No one eats his classmates and lives. Not on his watch.
--
Things seep through the mental block drop by drop. Once it’s there, it can’t be completely edited out. These Jedi mind tricks really aren’t bulletproof.
Ben mentions a car once when talking to Mom. A black Chevy Impala. Classics. She says, yeah, and gets that dreamy look in her eyes, which tells him that she has forgotten too. He doesn’t teach her how to remember.
--
They have a fight when Ben informs her that he’s not going to college. He just can’t take any more of that lacklustre life when he knows what really is out there. A little voice of reason inside him tells him that it’s not the right time for stupid, self-sacrificial heroism. But heroism is just a ruse. He is being incredibly selfish. He leaves home anyway, to do some soul-searching. And some people-searching. He doesn’t tell Mom the best part, though. He’s off to kill some bad things.
--
How does one go about reintroducing himself into someone’s life?
“Hi, I’m Ben Braeden, you used to date my Mom and you’re possibly my Dad.”
“Hi, I’m Ben Braeden, you yelled at me about a gun once, remember? Check out what I can do with it now.”
“Hi, I’m Ben Braeden, I missed you.”
“Hi, I’m Ben Braeden, and you’re a douchebag who had my memory erased. Anything to say for yourself?”
--
He meets people and picks up bits and pieces of information. They are famous, infamous even, but no one knows where they are. Ben tries Sioux Falls, but somehow that’s a dead end. Even when it seems to him that he is catching up, they are already gone by the time he gets to the next town. Every hunt leaves Ben with a bone-splintering sensation of weariness, but every dead evil thing brings him closer to his goal. Most days he goes hungry and runs on sheer despair and pent-up anger. He still has no idea what to say.
--
He calls home every fortnight or so because he doesn’t want Mom to start panicking or report him as a missing person. Eventually she stops asking him to come back. He wants to say, sorry I left you all alone, but instead he says, I’ll take care, I promise.
It’s the one promise he always keeps, in his own way. He takes care of bad things.
--
The next job is vampires. Ben remembers the teeth and the feverish glint in the hungry eyes, like snapshots of a childhood nightmare. When he was little, vampires were a fad. Today they are only too real. Ben sharpens a knife for them. He is just reckless enough to pay his respects to the past fashion by attacking an entire nest solo. Maybe if he tests his fortune just a little more ostentatiously, someone will notice.
--
When the vampires wake up, Ben really isn’t surprised. He takes out one, maybe wounds a couple before he is insistently invited to dinner as the main course. That’s when those two show up. Here, of all places.
Amidst all the carnage, Ben grins stupidly. The grin fades when they don’t recognize him.
--
He spends an entire day watching them from afar. Okay, it’s been years. He must have changed. And it was dark at that warehouse last night. And Ben didn’t say a word. He felt useless and dumb like years ago when those demons had got him and Mom.
And the way they looked at him when they spotted the knife… The way he looked at him. Like a pro looking down on an amateur. No malice, just mild irritation. Some pity. A dash of amusement. A pinch of surprise, possibly at his age. What are you doing here, kid? Get a life!
I had a life, Ben wanted to hiss. You were in it, and then you took it from me.
But not a single word out of his mouth. He hates himself for his silence.
--
When he was a kid, he used to tell people his Dad was a superhero, away on a top secret mission. Who would have thought superheroes resided in shabby motels and ate cheap greasy food?
Ben isn’t very good at this tailing thing. They probably notice.
--
He’s got a banshee in his collection, a few vengeful spirits, a rawhead, a couple of fanged things he has no name for, but no demons. Hits a little too close to home.
He’d like to try his hand at angels, though. They’re all over the place these days. They’re mostly dicks, or so he’s heard.
--
The vampires are still at large. They have his scent, so they’ll probably be out to get him. He could use a back-up. Now there is something to talk about.
He balls his clammy hand into a fist and prepares to knock on the door. He has been like that for ten minutes already. He can’t convince his body to move, but if he doesn’t, somebody is going to die tonight. At times like these, stupid heroism trumps selfishness.
Yeah, that never really works.
Of all the creeps Mom’s let into her life this one just had to leave a scar. It’s a fucked-up world.
There are so many questions. Like, why? And, why? And, do you ever miss us? But more importantly, why?
Ben knocks.
It is him who opens the door. He looks more or less the way Ben remembers. And it angers him, because why should he look okay when he’s given up so much? When he’s given up Mom?
“Hi, I’m Ben Braeden,” he blurts out and notes, not without satisfaction, a spark of shock and recognition in those wary eyes. “Now, before you die of old age staring like that, how about we finish off that vampire nest?”
There. Let them ask questions now. He’s done.
June 11, 2011
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: future!fic [spoilers for 6x21, “Let It Bleed”]
Summary: Ben is off to do some soul-searching. And some people-searching. And to kill some bad things along the way.
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke, CW, etc. Title from “The Wishing Well” by The Airborne Toxic Event.
A/N: I talked to jayazz, and this one wrote itself. I don’t even… ugh.
ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM OF THE WISHING WELL
Ben doesn’t have a father. But that’s okay. That’s just how things roll with him and Mom. Sometimes she lets men into her life, but it never lasts. Some of them, Ben misses; others, not so much. Some don’t even get past the first week. He can’t even remember their names.
But that’s the trouble with Ben: there are many things he can’t remember lately.
--
One of them - Matt? Paul? Josh maybe? - takes Ben on a hunting trip. Mom freaks out. Yells at him not to do it again, and Ben loses the count of the never-evers in her speech, but she’s not even out of breath yet. She can pull off bitchy like no other when she puts her mind to it. Ben watches her with tired eyes.
“What’s gotten into you?” he asks at the first chance he gets to pipe in. “It’s not like it was a bear or something.”
Her anger fades like sunshine on a rainy day. She takes a seat on the bed before him and looks at him with an air of strange sadness, probably thinking typical motherly things: like how much he’s grown up and all that.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs.
Ben guesses they won’t be seeing MattPaulJosh any time soon.
--
Ben fights at school sometimes. He’s got moves and he likes showing them off, but it’s not even that. He’s long past being bullied, too. Fighting gives him something that he has no name for, something that is stored beyond all the little things he cannot remember.
--
Ben is sixteen when he ices his first… weird nasty thing with teeth and claws. He does it at school, after hours, in the workshop. Lots of sharp objects there. Blood splatters all over the walls and all over Ben. He shivers from fear and anger and wants to look away, but he watches anyway as the thing bleeds and dies. He wonders vaguely how to get all those stains off of his clothes because Mom will be sure to notice.
No one eats his classmates and lives. Not on his watch.
--
Things seep through the mental block drop by drop. Once it’s there, it can’t be completely edited out. These Jedi mind tricks really aren’t bulletproof.
Ben mentions a car once when talking to Mom. A black Chevy Impala. Classics. She says, yeah, and gets that dreamy look in her eyes, which tells him that she has forgotten too. He doesn’t teach her how to remember.
--
They have a fight when Ben informs her that he’s not going to college. He just can’t take any more of that lacklustre life when he knows what really is out there. A little voice of reason inside him tells him that it’s not the right time for stupid, self-sacrificial heroism. But heroism is just a ruse. He is being incredibly selfish. He leaves home anyway, to do some soul-searching. And some people-searching. He doesn’t tell Mom the best part, though. He’s off to kill some bad things.
--
How does one go about reintroducing himself into someone’s life?
“Hi, I’m Ben Braeden, you used to date my Mom and you’re possibly my Dad.”
“Hi, I’m Ben Braeden, you yelled at me about a gun once, remember? Check out what I can do with it now.”
“Hi, I’m Ben Braeden, I missed you.”
“Hi, I’m Ben Braeden, and you’re a douchebag who had my memory erased. Anything to say for yourself?”
--
He meets people and picks up bits and pieces of information. They are famous, infamous even, but no one knows where they are. Ben tries Sioux Falls, but somehow that’s a dead end. Even when it seems to him that he is catching up, they are already gone by the time he gets to the next town. Every hunt leaves Ben with a bone-splintering sensation of weariness, but every dead evil thing brings him closer to his goal. Most days he goes hungry and runs on sheer despair and pent-up anger. He still has no idea what to say.
--
He calls home every fortnight or so because he doesn’t want Mom to start panicking or report him as a missing person. Eventually she stops asking him to come back. He wants to say, sorry I left you all alone, but instead he says, I’ll take care, I promise.
It’s the one promise he always keeps, in his own way. He takes care of bad things.
--
The next job is vampires. Ben remembers the teeth and the feverish glint in the hungry eyes, like snapshots of a childhood nightmare. When he was little, vampires were a fad. Today they are only too real. Ben sharpens a knife for them. He is just reckless enough to pay his respects to the past fashion by attacking an entire nest solo. Maybe if he tests his fortune just a little more ostentatiously, someone will notice.
--
When the vampires wake up, Ben really isn’t surprised. He takes out one, maybe wounds a couple before he is insistently invited to dinner as the main course. That’s when those two show up. Here, of all places.
Amidst all the carnage, Ben grins stupidly. The grin fades when they don’t recognize him.
--
He spends an entire day watching them from afar. Okay, it’s been years. He must have changed. And it was dark at that warehouse last night. And Ben didn’t say a word. He felt useless and dumb like years ago when those demons had got him and Mom.
And the way they looked at him when they spotted the knife… The way he looked at him. Like a pro looking down on an amateur. No malice, just mild irritation. Some pity. A dash of amusement. A pinch of surprise, possibly at his age. What are you doing here, kid? Get a life!
I had a life, Ben wanted to hiss. You were in it, and then you took it from me.
But not a single word out of his mouth. He hates himself for his silence.
--
When he was a kid, he used to tell people his Dad was a superhero, away on a top secret mission. Who would have thought superheroes resided in shabby motels and ate cheap greasy food?
Ben isn’t very good at this tailing thing. They probably notice.
--
He’s got a banshee in his collection, a few vengeful spirits, a rawhead, a couple of fanged things he has no name for, but no demons. Hits a little too close to home.
He’d like to try his hand at angels, though. They’re all over the place these days. They’re mostly dicks, or so he’s heard.
--
The vampires are still at large. They have his scent, so they’ll probably be out to get him. He could use a back-up. Now there is something to talk about.
He balls his clammy hand into a fist and prepares to knock on the door. He has been like that for ten minutes already. He can’t convince his body to move, but if he doesn’t, somebody is going to die tonight. At times like these, stupid heroism trumps selfishness.
Yeah, that never really works.
Of all the creeps Mom’s let into her life this one just had to leave a scar. It’s a fucked-up world.
There are so many questions. Like, why? And, why? And, do you ever miss us? But more importantly, why?
Ben knocks.
It is him who opens the door. He looks more or less the way Ben remembers. And it angers him, because why should he look okay when he’s given up so much? When he’s given up Mom?
“Hi, I’m Ben Braeden,” he blurts out and notes, not without satisfaction, a spark of shock and recognition in those wary eyes. “Now, before you die of old age staring like that, how about we finish off that vampire nest?”
There. Let them ask questions now. He’s done.
June 11, 2011