FIC: The Sharpness of the Outline (4/9)
Title: The Sharpness of the Outline
Author: kimonkey7
Rating: R - for strong language and content
Pairing: none (gen) Dean, Sam, John
Disclaimer: Not mine. Damn it.
SPOILERS: through 3X07
Summary: There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. - Anaïs Nin
A/N: This story serves as my Sweet Charity fic for a_starfish Thanks to pdragon76 for massive support and pants kicking. Those interested can read Their Appointed Rounds which serves as a companion to this fic, though it's not necessary to do so. Special tip of the hat to smilla02 for the wonderful icons.
The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing. - George Bernard Shaw
Bellingham, Washington - 2007
All-in-all, considering? He thought Sam took it pretty well; he’d pulled the punch at the last second, and boxed Dean’s ear instead of his jaw. Hurt like a bitch, but didn’t make him wobble. Sam had stormed out after that. Dean figured a brisk walk would do his brother wonders.
“Guess maybe I shoulda told you what this was about, after all,” Jimmy said by way of apology.
Dean took the towel-wrapped ice from him, held it against the side of his head. “Nah, just…” he sighed, “things’ve been kinda crazy since Dad died. Me and Sam… It’s just been kinda crazy.”
Jimmy nodded, didn’t press it, and Dean was quietly grateful. He knew from before, though - just like with Sam - the conversation wasn’t over. There’d be questions about what ‘kinda crazy’ meant, questions about why Sam had reacted the way he had. Right then, though - just like with Sam - Jimmy’s personal guilt was keeping him from pinning Dean to the mat.
“Look, if I’d a known this was--”
“Jimmy, man…there’s no way you coulda known.” A sad smile overtook Dean’s lips. “I mean, no offense to any of this,” he continued, free hand motioning at the files of research on the table, the articles and pictures tacked to the walls, “but, me and Sam are working on a whole different scale these days. This is just crossfire in a bigger war, man.”
Jimmy nodded again, took a sip from one of the fresh beers he’d brought to the table along with the ice pack.
Dean had no idea what he should tell Jimmy, how much he should share. He didn’t have any idea himself what it meant - if it meant anything at all - but he wasn’t going to try figuring it out with anyone but his brother.
The door to the cabin opened, and Sam rushed in with a blast of cold night air.
Speak of the Devil. And Dean hated himself for the internal cringe the casual axiom caused. “Hey.”
“I’m not talkin’ to you yet,” Sam said, finger jabbing at Dean as he walked past the table and into the bathroom. The door slammed shut and the water in the sink went on.
Dean was a big fan of the facilities shut-out, personally; Sam only used it when it was too cold or too hot to be outside.
Jimmy rolled his beer bottle between his palms. “You want me to take off?”
Dean squinched his face. “No, man. Not gonna kick you outta your own place.”
“Shit,” Jimmy laughed, “I don’t sleep here unless I’m workin’ on somethin’.” He gave the front door a nod. “I been livin’ at Cheryl’s for the better parta two years. She hates to even stick her nose in here.”
“Still, man. Your place.”
Jimmy pushed himself up from his chair and snatched the empties that had convened on the table while they’d laid out most of the Maltby tale for Sam. “I was thinkin’ you and Sam could stay here if you want. Make it base. It’ll keep you close to all the research, save you money on the nearest fleabag.”
Dean gave him half a smile and lifted his beer in salute. “Thanks, Jimmy. I appreciate that. Think we’ll take you up on it, at least for tonight.”
Before Dean knew it, Jimmy had his coat on and was standing at the front door, working a couple of keys off a jumbled ring.
“I’ll give you a key for the front door and the work shed. I’ll be back in the morning, but, just in case. There’s more beer in the fridge, back-ups in the icebox in the workshop. If you get hungry, there’s some canned shit in the kitchen. You remember how to work the stove?” he asked, tossing the liberated keys to Dean one at a time.
He caught them and set them on the table. “I’ll remember if I need to. Thanks, Jimmy.”
“Least I can do,” Jimmy said, zipping up his jacket to the collar. He jutted his chin in the direction of the bathroom. “You guys gonna be okay?”
Dean’s eyebrows rose as he cocked his head. “Not even a blip on the radar these days. We’ll be fine.”
“All right,” Jimmy sighed, hand on the knob. He paused, and Dean watched the question form on his lips. “Whatta you think it means? The bones. The symbol.”
Dean dropped the melting ice pack to the table, ran a hand over the wetness it had left in his hair. “Honestly? I dunno, man. Not yet.”
“But it’s the same one…same one you saw in your vision. Same one Tabby drew before she…”
Dean nodded, biting at the corner of his mouth.
Jimmy pursed his lips, found the floor fascinating for several seconds, then broke the spell with a deep inhale. “You got my cell number. Call if you need anything. I’m not far.”
“Thanks again, man. Really.”
“Night,” Jimmy called as the door closed behind him.
Dean pressed both hands over his face and sucked in a deep breath, let it out with a roaring “Fuck!” He worked his fingertips into the corners of his eyes and waited for the water in the bathroom to shut off.
Hell was an interesting thing; real and conceptual at the same time. Reality had concept in a headlock the last six months or so, though, and Dean was beginning to think a lot more frequently about the deal he’d made. Until tonight, there’d been no regret in the consideration. He’d done what he’d done to watch out for Sam, to keep him safe.
Safe from what?
He’d made the deal thinking he’d at least get a chance to see their dad, to show him what he’d been willing to sacrifice to make things right and save Sam. He shook his head, took a long draw off his beer.
Christ, man. Look where following orders has gotten you all this time.
The Hell Dean saw in that cemetery was his Hell; a damnation of his character he regularly hid with the smoke and mirrors of hunting things and saving people. What he’d seen when those thirteen stone steps disappeared came on the heels of Arlee and Arizona, of Sam’s escape to Stanford. The vision screamed to Dean of his failure as a brother, as an individual: for the love of his father, he’d betrayed his loyalty to Sam - let him go without a fight, stood by their dad when sides had been chosen. Dean had never been able to reconcile it in himself or rectify it with his brother. There was something primal - base - in Dean’s desire to please their dad, to make him proud; a life-long struggle for worthiness in their broken family, their fractured world.
But Dean’s interpretation of his Maltby Hell had begun to shift. Just a little at first - an itch in his subconscious when Sam first told him about the visions.
Then Max in Saginaw.
The cabin, where old Yellow Eyes had worn their dad and told Sam he had plans for him and all the children like him.
Cold Oak and Wyoming had ratcheted up things a few dozen notches, and the photos Jimmy showed them had brought Maltby back to Dean with startling clarity; a 3-D, Technicolor, surround sound IMAX of his brother splashing blood down a mountain of yellow bones.
But the weight and ambiguity of the promise he’d made to their dad - to save Sam - made Dean an expert peddler of half-truths and edited information. He should have learned by now, but some lessons were harder than others.
The hiss of water from the bathroom cut off, and Dean swallowed back the remainder of his beer. He rebundled the last vestiges of ice in the towel Jimmy’d given him, returned it to the damp spot on the side of his head. He wasn’t above trying to temper his brother’s mood with a little guilt and pity.
He dropped his eyes when the bathroom door opened - you don’t stare down a tiger - and waited while Sam prowled the periphery of the cabin. The tension was palpable - felt like fire - and put the scent of smoke in Dean’s nose. He stared longingly at the empty beer bottle in his hand, wishing it full.
Sam made another circuit around the edge of the small space. Dean listened to his brother’s deep inhales and exhales, knew Sam was gearing up to start the battle.
His brother had his own pace with these kinds of things, and it was making Dean nervous how long Sam was taking to get to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The hunter in Dean - the brother in him, the protector - wanted to start mapping things out and fitting them together. He wanted answers and understanding, forgiveness, closure in whatever form it shook out.
“I wanna know why. I wanna know why you didn’t tell me.”
He figured the truth was as good as any armor; until he’d started stacking up the evidence, he’d been looking at things through the wrong end of the telescope. “I didn’t know.”
Sam’s voice boomed with indignation. “You didn’t know? You didn’t think it was important to maybe mention you had a vision of me in Hell, standing on a mountain of bones?”
“In my defense, you’re the one who--”
“In your defense?”
“I just mean,” stammered Dean, hand sweeping the air in front of him, “Maltby was supposed to cause visions. I didn’t think it--”
“No. You didn’t think.”
“I didn’t think,” Dean said with snarled punctuation, “that it was about you.” Punching back wasn’t really part of the whole honesty and truth plan, but the verbal fist jabbed at Sam before he could stop it. “It’s not always about you, Sam.”
Sam was no Ali, though; no rope-a-dope for him. “But you’ve been putting it together. I know how your brain works, Dean.” Sam’s hands made a violent run through his hair. “How long? Since Max? Since the cabin, with Dad?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, Dean. It matters.”
“Why?”
Sam’s long-distance accusation flew at Dean from the opposite side of the cabin. “For the last six months, you’ve been fighting me left and right, telling me how you don’t deserve to be alive, to be saved. Showing me. But I’m supposed to just roll over when you trade your life for mine? When that vision-- When you know what I could become?”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know, Sam, okay? Nothin’s gonna happen to you as long as I’m around.”
“Yeah, Dean. As long as you’re around. Another six months. You got a murder-suicide planned for your 364th night?”
He let it slide - had to. Sometimes it really was all about Sam. “The Yellow-Eyed Demon’s dead. You’re not even havin’ visions anymore, right?”
Sam covered his face with both hands, drew in a breath and blew it through the shutters of his palms. He dragged his hands past his cheeks, fingertips stopping to rest on his chin. “What’d Dad see?”
“What?”
“Dad had a vision, too, right? You came out of the crypt, and he was having a vision. You said he called my name.”
“Yeah.”
“So, what did he see?”
Dean felt suddenly sick. “I dunno.”
“You don’t know?”
“Am I not speaking clearly? I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.” What had their dad seen? And what had he known about Sam and the Yellow Eyed Demon when they’d shared Hell in that cemetery?
“And you didn’t ask?”
Dean flashed him a you’re kiddin’ me, right? smirk.
“He wouldn’t tell you.”
“Not for lack of me tryin’,” Dean said, rising. He crossed to the kitchen, kept Sam’s pacing figure in the corner of his eye as he fought the bumble bee thoughts that swarmed and stung.
“What happened?”
“Whatta you mean?” Dean asked, hooking a beer for himself and one for Sam.
“Jimmy said he tried to hide you and dad on Lummi Island. Why?” Sam asked, taking the offered beer.
* * *
Bellingham, Washington - 2002
“I don’t care if you call him Mahatma Gandhi, I’m not hidin’ ‘em out at my place.”
The whisper was sharp, adamant. It brought Dean closer to the surface of consciousness than he’d been in a while. It was Cheryl - the woman who sewed up his leg. Jimmy’s wife or girlfriend or something, he’d guessed.
“Look, baby. John’s not gonna go anywhere without Dean, but he needs to lay low. Cops have a description of him and the truck from those kids… Anybody could have seen him here in the past few days.”
“Jimmy--”
“I can’t have-- I don’t think I can handle the cops again so soon after Tabby. I don’t--”
“Sweetie. Jimmy. Listen to me. This is crazy, all of this… What happened with Tabby was--”
Her voice was soothing, and Dean turned toward it naturally, pulled by need. Yearning. The unexpected stretch brought a flare to his thigh, a moan to his lips. Made him suck in a breath that momentarily silenced the small cabin.
“Dean?” she said tentatively, warm voice and hands on him, then.
“Mmm,” was all he could manage in reply. He swallowed, and the sides of his dry throat stuck together. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and he grunted.
Cheryl’s hand moved from his shoulder, slid over the top of his head to the back of his neck.
“Here, sweetie. Can you open your eyes? Take a drink of water?”
He cracked his lids, let her ease him forward, and took two drinks of the cool watwer she offered. He nodded, and the cup was pulled away.
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” he croaked.
“Hey, sport. You’re lookin’ better,” Jimmy said, creeping behind Cheryl into Dean’s line of sight.
Dean brought up his hand to rub his eyes, paused for a second at the bandages. He couldn’t remember at first why his fingers were wrapped in gauze, then the cemetery came in flashes: the ghosts, the gate, the wrought-iron gashing his hand when he grabbed it.
“Where’s my dad?”
There was an uneasy sense of déjà vu sneaking up on him; he’d asked that before. Had he seen him? When light was streaming through the windows of the cabin like it was now?
“He’s out back in the workshop. I’ll get him,” said Jimmy.
When had they been in the cemetery? Was it last night?
Cheryl ran her hand through his hair, laid the back of it across his forehead. “Doesn’t feel like you’re running a fever. That’s good. How’s your head?”
He hurt his head, too? Fuck. He was feeling all muzzy, couldn’t get himself in the present.
“What--? H-how long have I--?” He tried to sit up, undamaged hand grabbing at the couch cushion for purchase.
Cheryl pushed gently against his chest, keeping him down. “Hold on there, Tiger. Just… Stay down, Dean.”
He hated it took her so little effort.
“You’ve been out of it for over twenty-four hours.”
Twenty-four hours? He couldn’t reconcile the time, wasn’t sure if he’d even talked to his dad since Maltby or if it had all been a dream. Maybe Maltby’d been a dream. He liked that idea quite a bit, but the throb in his leg and his right hand was telling him something different.
Cheryl was shaking something into her palm from a paper envelope.
“I don’t know where he got ‘em, but your dad managed to get some pain killers. It’s been a good six hours since you had any. You wanna take one?”
Dean tightly squeezed shut his eyes, tried to shake off the veil between him and the real world.
“Dean?”
“I don’t-- Where’s my dad?”
“Jimmy’s gettin’ him, sweetie. Hang on just a minute, okay?”
Something had happened. Something worse than his leg and his hand and his maybe-head. He’d seen Sammy, and Sam had been… There was fire. So much heat and blood and fire. His thoughts were sidetracked by a sudden urgency. “Gotta pee.”
“What was that?”
God, where was his dad? Dean’s bladder ached and stabbed in his belly. “I need to-- I gotta pee.”
“Oh. Oh!” Cheryl said with a quick blush. “Right. Okay. Hang on.” She leaned away from the couch, fumbled through a bag on the floor and sat back up with a plastic urinal in hand. “Here. Lemme…” She started to pull away the thin bedding bunched at his waist.
He grimaced, held the cotton edge of the sheet in his left hand. “No.”
“No?”
“I wanna... I have to get up.”
Cheryl frowned. “Dean, honey. I’m a nurse. Used to be one, anyway. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before. Besides, I’ve already seen everything,” she finished with a wink and a conciliatory half-smile.
“I just-- I wanna get up. Please.”
The half-smile turned into a frown. “It’s gonna hurt, hon. I don’t think--”
“‘S okay,” Dean said, and meant it. He needed to move, wake up, and pain was a pretty effective alarm clock. He started pushing his way into a sitting position.
Cheryl shook her head and helped him with a grumble -something about men being stubborn jerks - but Dean couldn’t make it out over his grunts and bit-back gasps.
The door to the cabin opened then, and John came in with Jimmy on his heels.
“What’s goin’ on?” his dad growled.
“He’s bein’ stubborn. Does that surprise you?” Cheryl asked as she moved aside, acid in her voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“What’s goin’ on, Dude?” his dad asked, dropping in a squat next to the couch.
“Gotta take a piss.”
John twisted to look at Cheryl. “You got that urinal thing?”
Her arms were crossed over her chest, nose squinched up in annoyance. “He said he won’t use it.”
“Dean,” his dad admonished, turning back to him.
“Please, Dad?”
“Should he be up?”
“Probably not,” Cheryl said from behind John, “but what do I know?” She threw up her hands and stalked into the kitchen, Jimmy right behind her.
His dad blew out a breath and shook his head, slipped one arm behind Dean’s shoulders, and rested the other at the crook of his knee. “You know this is gonna hurt, right?”
Dean nodded.
His dad slid his arm under his knees, and Dean sucked in a quick breath through clenched teeth. He threw his arm around his dad’s shoulders, and John answered with his own breathy wince.
Dean was confused until he recognized thick gauze pads under his dad’s t-shirt. Oh, right. I shot him in the back. Jesus. He snapped down on a yelp when his dad pulled up and clean-jerked him from the couch.
“You’re way too old for this, kid,” his dad grunted.
“Sorry.”
“So am I,” his dad ground out.
Eased onto the warped linoleum in front of the toilet, Dean was surprised - and a little embarrassed - to find himself naked when the sheet dropped away. But he couldn’t be too concerned. As soon as he was on his feet, the dizziness set in. He pretended it didn’t bother him when his dad’s hands hooked into his armpits, steadying him while he relieved himself. He stiffened with childish shame when the pungent scent of his piss - dark with evidence of his dehydration - drifted up from the commode. “Sorry,” he whispered.
“Stop apologizing,” his dad said from behind him.
Dean shook off, nodded when his dad asked if he was finished. He felt his dad’s hands slide on his back, felt the cotton sheet against his hip again, and moved to help secure it around his waist. Dean shifted a fraction of the weight he’d deferred to his right leg onto his injured left; the bathroom strobed bright white, and he slammed his front teeth over his lower lip.
“You ready to go back?”
“Hang on…” He clamped a hand around the cool lip of the porcelain sink, swallowed thickly, and cleared the rattle in his chest.
“Lemme walk.”
“Dean,” his dad breathed, like a rebuke.
“Got to sooner or later, right?”
“You sure?”
Dean popped a quick nod. “Sooner’s probably better, I’m guessin’.”
John moved to Dean’s left side, got an arm across his back. One hand hooked under his pit, the other wrapped around the wrist Dean flung over his shoulder. They inched sideways through the bathroom door and into the hall. Dean begged a second to catch his breath, and then they finished the snail’s crawl to the couch. When he was settled, when the room stopped its angry spin, Dean saw Cheryl make her way back over, a jelly jar filled with a cloudy liquid in her hand.
“Dean, sweetie. Drink this.”
He shook his head, knew his voice would betray the calm nonchalance he was trying to project. He squeezed his eyes shut when the cabin tilted on its moorings.
“Drink it, Dean,” his dad’s voice cut through the shifting sands in his head.
He opened his eyes and saw the glass in front of him, wrapped in his dad’s fingers. Dean’s gaze lifted from the sedative-spiked brew, locked onto his dad’s over the rim of the glass. “Need to keep my head clear. I need to know what happened.”
Dean wanted to believe the stricken look on his dad’s face was concern for his health, but it could have been regret or confusion; all of the above were equally foreign attire for John Winchester.
“Please, Dean,” his dad said, “if we need to move fast, I need to know you can.”
He held his dad’s stare for another long beat, then followed orders. Took the glass and choked down its grainy bitter contents. He coughed on the tail of it, wiped the back of his wrist across his lips and gritted his teeth. “Tell me what happened.”
Dean watched his dad’s gaze drop to his lap where he sat, fingers of his right hand twisting the gold band on his left. He waited out his deep inhale of breath, listened as it hissed back out between his dad’s drawn lips. The first foamy wave of the narcotic flowed onto the shore of his wakefulness then, and he blinked against the advance. “Dad…”
Jimmy stepped forward and dropped a hand on John’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze. “I’m gonna run Cheryl home. Make some phone calls.”
Cheryl slid from behind Jimmy and addressed the back of John’s head. “There’s no sign of infection right now, but if you can get some antibiotics as easily as you got the pain killers, it wouldn’t hurt. For you, too.”
Dean watched his dad answer with a silent nod.
Jimmy slipped his arm around Cheryl’s waist. “I’ll deal with that. You just lay low, John. Please. No sense addin’ a drug deal to the list of possible charges.”
His dad winced, shoulders hunching, then nodded again. “Thanks, Jimmy.”
The slow heat of the drugs warmed through Dean, traveled the length of his arms and legs as Jimmy and Cheryl made their quiet departure. His left thigh was still putting up some resistance, but that was all right; it was keeping Dean awake and focused on his dad. “What happened?” he asked again when the cabin door closed.
His dad scrubbed his hands down his face, bristled fingers through his beard, and traded another deep in-and-out of warm afternoon air. “What do you remember?”
“I remember the salt and burn goin’ FUBAR, me comin’ out of the crypt and taking you down on the stairs. I remember you callin’ Sam’s name, and then…”
“And then?”
Dean fought back the panic and fear that rose in his throat like bile. He didn’t want to tell his dad what he’d seen, what Sam had said. Didn’t want to speak of fire and blood and self-recrimination.
“Dean?”
“I saw… Sammy was there. He was… There were these bones, and flames. A lot of blood.” He shook his head and brought his hand to his mouth.
“What did he say? Did he say anything?”
Sam had been thrust into Dean’s arms at four years old. Take your brother outside as fast as you can! Don't look back! Now, Dean, go! And he hadn’t looked back, hadn’t questioned the weight of the responsibility, even when he thought it might pull him under. But maybe he hadn’t done such a good job keeping Sam safe. Maybe he should have kept running the night of the fire.
“Dean?”
Because that’s what Sam meant, he was sure. Dean had the power all along to save him, save them both. Take them away from the life their dad made for them; hunting and prowling and chasing ghosts - real and imagined.
“What did he say, Son?”
“He said…he said I should have saved him. I could have saved him, and I didn’t.”
His dad pushed up from the chair beside the couch, fingers linked across the nape of his neck. He paced to the other side of the small cabin, kept his back to Dean. “What about the bones?”
“What?”
“Was there anything… Do you remember anything about the bones?”
He tried to think, but the pain killers were creeping in like cemetery ground fog. He sunk back into the pillow behind his head, tried to remember the vision with Sam’s face and words blocked out. “There was-- Some of them had a…pattern on them.”
“What kind of pattern?”
Dean could tell by the volume of his voice his dad had moved back toward him. “Like a…” His left hand made lazy arcs in the air. “Lines and stuff. Like a lightning bolt.”
He heard a rustling of paper, and the chair banged up against the side of the couch. He sucked in a breath against the throb it set off in his thigh, and then his dad was shoving paper and a pen into his hands.
“Draw it.”
“Huh?” Dean asked, cracking his lids. His dad looked frantic, agitated and expectant.
“Draw the pattern. Please.”
Dean nodded lightly, tried to straighten the jumbled line of thought in his head. What was so important about some pattern, when Sam had stood atop a mountain of death, spewing blood from his eyes and fingertips?
“Please, Son.”
He turned his attention to the paper in his lap, got a stiff grip around the pencil with his bandaged right hand. It wasn’t exact, but he did the best he could. When he finished, he tilted the rough sketch toward his dad.
“Like this, I guess. It wasn’t on all the bones, just some of the skulls. Right here,” he said, and tapped his forehead with the capped end of the ballpoint.
His dad snatched the drawing from his hands, ran his fingers over his mouth. “Sonuvabitch.”
“What?”
His dad didn’t respond, was a hundred miles away; territory Dean couldn’t map.
The chair wobbled on its two back legs, nearly tipping when his dad popped up again, cramming the sketch into his jeans pocket. He brushed a hand through his hair, fevered eyes darting across the cabin.
“Dad?”
He pointed at him. “You stay put.”
“What?”
“I mean it, Dean,” he said, crossing to the weapons bag on the floor by the door. He came back with a Colt. Popped the clip and checked the load.
“Jimmy said-- Where are you goin’?”
His dad clacked back the slide, then handed him the gun butt-first. “You’ve got a full mag plus one in the chamber.”
Dean pawed at the sheet gathered at his hips, shook his head lightly. “I can’t-- Dad, what’s goin’ on?” His tongue was heavy in his mouth, as cottony as his head suddenly felt. Time stutter-stepped, and Dean felt the cool steel of the gun pressed into his palm. Felt his dad’s insistent fingers wrap his lax ones around the grip.
“I’ll be back,” he said from the cabin door.
* * *
Bellingham, Washington - 2007
Sam’s jaw was clenched. “He drugs you, puts a gun in your hand, and fucking takes off.” He shook his head. “Typical.”
Dean rubbed absently at his left thigh, didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure he should; Sam’s anger was shifting from him to their dad and - not that Dean was playing him - it was nice to have the laser focus of Sam’s discontent on someone else.
“The same symbol in Jimmy’s photos?”
Dean nodded. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“So, what is it?” Sam asked.
“I dunno.”
“You don’t know?”
Dean shrugged. “Never really researched it.”
“You never--” Sam made a disgusted noise in his throat.
Dean could feel the anger shifting back to him. He twitched uncomfortably in his chair.
“But Dad thought it was something.”
“I guess.”
“So where did he go?”
“Look, whatever they gave me took me out. I woke up about two hours later when Jimmy was pryin’ the Colt outta my hand.”
“And Dad was nowhere to be found.”
“Jimmy didn’t look, and I was in no condition to go anywhere.”
Sam ran his hands through his hair. “I’m still not getting all of this. What happened at the cemetery? What’s all the shit about cops and charges and laying low?”
Dean drained the rest of his beer, set the empty on the table and wiped the bottle’s moisture from his fingers across the nape of his neck.
“Dean?”
He blew out a breath. “After the…” He waved his hand back and forth, cutting choppily through the space in front of him. “…visions in the cemetery,” he cocked his head to one side. “Dad kind of lost it.”
Sam moved closer, tried to win some eye contact, but Dean wouldn’t give it over.
“Lost it like how?”
Dean shook his head. Blew out a breath through his nose. “Like, freaked. Lit the place up.”
“The cemetery?”
“Yeah.” He rose, avoided looking Sam in the eye, and crossed to the mini-fridge.
“How do you-- How did he--?”
Dean lifted his brows and tilted his head, cracked the top off a fresh beer. “Yeah. I don’t have a fuckin’ clue. I was out cold, remember?” he prompted, then paused to take a swig from the cold bottle. “Donatin’ a couple pints of A-neg to the local soil.”
“But I mean--”
“Look, Sam,” Dean said, mildly exasperated with all the questions, but more so with the frustration of the memories themselves. “Dad was never real good at the fill-in-the-blanks game. Everything I know I got from Jimmy, and what he knew was what he was able to get out of Dad that night.”
He passed the table on his way back into the main room and instead flopped onto the lumpy couch along the wall, swallowed hard when the sense memory of the cushions beneath him brought his past to his present.
“So, what did he tell you?” Sam asked, dropping his own long frame onto the futon opposite Dean.
The nail of Dean’s thumb found the loose edge of the beer label, picked and pried while he tried to piece the tale. “He said Dad showed up, kicked in the door. Had me slung over his shoulder, unconscious, both of us covered in blood.” He paused to take a swig of beer, swallowed hard. “Jimmy said he was totally out of it. Reekeda smoke, yellin’ about… Said he wasn’t gonna let it happen.”
“Let what happen?” Sam asked leaning forward, arms balanced on his knees.
Dean looked up and made the first honest eye contact since he’d started talking. “I don’t know, Sammy. Maybe--” He shook his head. “I’m startin’ to wonder when Dad knew what he knew.”
“About me, you mean.”
It pained him to nod, but he did. Choked on the almost-whisper of “Yeah.”
Sam’s head bobbed a quick confirmation of understanding, lips pursed and brow furrowed.
“Jimmy said Dad was barely coherent, freaked him out because of what happened with Tabby. Managed to get out of him that he…I dunno. He grabbed a gas can from the truck, I guess. Doused the area, lit it up. I figure that’s when I came to the first time, right after he set the fire--”
“But why did he--?”
“I dunno, Sam. Shit, when have I ever understood half the reasons for Dad doin’ what he did? I don’t know what he saw in his vision, but if he had any clue about the Yellow Eyed Demon and you and the rest of the Special Kids? Who knows what that woulda set off in him.”
Dean could see his brother’s teeth working the corner of his mouth. He wanted to be able to give him the answers they both needed. It cut deeper - burned harder - to have it wrapped up in flames like it was. Fire and Winchesters? That was a multi-faceted, long-standing, fucked-up relationship right there.
“So, the cops?”
Dean shrugged. “Some teenagers playin’ pants-optional were parked down the road from the graveyard. Saw the flames eat up a couple of cedar trees, caught a black Chevy short-bed runnin’ hell for leather…” He threw up a hand. “Kinda hard to explain away four grave desecrations and settin’ a public cemetery on fire.”
“But Dad took off when you showed him the symbol.”
“Yeah, like I said.”
“Where did he go?”
“I told you, man, I don’t know. He showed up about half an hour after Jimmy did. The two of them got into it, Jimmy yellin’ about the cops and Dad bein’ reckless and outta control, and Dad was hittin’ back with a buncha ‘You know I gotta find out’ bullshit--”
“Find out what?”
“I don’t know, Sam!” He did mean to yell, but he was angry at himself. Felt on trial for once again letting down his brother. But - fuck - he’d nearly died, hadn’t he? He wasn’t thinking clearly at the time, and he certainly wasn’t thinking there was any connection between a Hell hallucination and his brother being the Boy King of the Underworld.
Until now.
“They took it outside after a couple of minutes. I guess I musta passed out again ‘cause I don’t remember how it wrapped up.”
“And you have no idea what that symbol means,” Sam said with a wave toward the table.
It was an accusation, and Dean winced a little inwardly; Sam had every right to be pissed and frustrated. “Two days later, soon as I could walk without fallin’ over, Dad got a bug up his ass about Michigan. Some bullshit gig with a chupacabra. We left the next day. I never had a chance to dig around.”
Sam gave him a pinched understanding look, almost as if to say, 'Never had time, or never made time?' Dean wasn't sure which of those was the truth. He took the awkward pause as a cue to drain his beer dry.
“So, what are we doin’ here?” Sam asked on an exhale.
“That’s a good question. Not one I have the answer to right now, though.”
Sam’s fingers pinched and plucked at his lower lip. Dean scratched absently at his belly.
“Look. Jimmy didn’t call us here for nothin’. There’s more he’s holdin’ back, I’m pretty sure. And if I hadn’t passed out like a fuckin’ pussy, he woulda laid it all out for us tonight. I say we hit the sack, hear him out in the morning, and make a decision then.”
Dean didn’t figure he’d be getting much sleep; he’d be trying to puzzle out the John Winchester Sneaky Bastard timeline for the next hour at least. He didn’t want to say it, but he wanted to stick around now. If the symbol was connected to Sam and the Yellow Eyed Demon, if Bellingham or Maltby or Lummi Island held any secrets that might give Dean a lead on saving his brother, he wanted to know. He just didn’t want Sam to know he wanted to know.
“Yeah. Okay,” Sam said, head shaking back and forth as if he was trying to shake up a blizzard of clarity in the snowglobe of his brain.
“You can take the futon. I’m kinda partial to the couch.”
Once he fell asleep, Dean dreamed about Maltby, but it was all jumbled up with Montana and South Dakota; a fucking travelogue through three shitty states.
It started at the staircase in the Maltby Cemetery. Him and his dad, leaning on their shovels and shooting the shit. But then Dad’s eyes flared yellow, and he took a step forward, grinning.
“You know what’s funny, Dean?”
“Whassat?”
“How you never seem to learn. You keep makin’ the same mistakes, over and over.”
His dad’s breath smelled like clover, and it made Dean’s stomach clench.
“Yeah, that’s hilarious,” he said.
“I mean, you keep givin’ and givin’, and me and Sammy keep takin’ and takin’. I bet you’re wonderin’ when you get paid off for all that sacrifice.”
Dean flinched. “Hadn’t really crossed my mind.”
The dirt at the bottom of the thirteen-step stairway rumbled, and he glanced down to see the soil rolling beneath his boots. Black blood rose in pools, filling in the space between chunks of earth. When he looked up, his dad’s eyes were back to normal, genuine concern painted all over his face.
“Aw, shit. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”
Dean felt the old familiar ache around his eye, like it had never lessened, never faded away. His hand went up and, sure enough, came down bloody.
“Jesus, Dad…”
He snapped awake, whispered curses falling from his mouth.
The cabin was dark, just residual orange from the cooling woodstove in the corner, but for a few seconds everything was blacker than black through his left eye. He blinked a half dozen times before it evened out. “Shit.”
“Dean?”
Shit. “Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s goin’ on?”
“Nothin’, Sam. Go back to sleep.”
“You sure?”
No. “Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“You already asked me that.”
“What’d you say?”
“I said, ‘go back to sleep, Sam.’”
“’Kay.”
Dean climbed out of bed and felt his way to the bathroom. Relieved himself of the night’s beer. He thought for a second maybe he should have had a few more; he never dreamed when he passed out.
He found his way back to the couch, shimmied under the covers. It was freezing in the cabin, and Dean envied the down sleeping bag into which Sam was snugged, envied the even snores he heard coming from his brother. He rolled onto his side, yanked the sheet and blankets over his head and pulled up his knees, created a cavern for his breath to warm. Deep inhales, slow exhales, until everything blurred and drifted away.
click for 5
Author: kimonkey7
Rating: R - for strong language and content
Pairing: none (gen) Dean, Sam, John
Disclaimer: Not mine. Damn it.
SPOILERS: through 3X07
Summary: There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. - Anaïs Nin
A/N: This story serves as my Sweet Charity fic for a_starfish Thanks to pdragon76 for massive support and pants kicking. Those interested can read Their Appointed Rounds which serves as a companion to this fic, though it's not necessary to do so. Special tip of the hat to smilla02 for the wonderful icons.
The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing. - George Bernard Shaw
Bellingham, Washington - 2007
All-in-all, considering? He thought Sam took it pretty well; he’d pulled the punch at the last second, and boxed Dean’s ear instead of his jaw. Hurt like a bitch, but didn’t make him wobble. Sam had stormed out after that. Dean figured a brisk walk would do his brother wonders.
“Guess maybe I shoulda told you what this was about, after all,” Jimmy said by way of apology.
Dean took the towel-wrapped ice from him, held it against the side of his head. “Nah, just…” he sighed, “things’ve been kinda crazy since Dad died. Me and Sam… It’s just been kinda crazy.”
Jimmy nodded, didn’t press it, and Dean was quietly grateful. He knew from before, though - just like with Sam - the conversation wasn’t over. There’d be questions about what ‘kinda crazy’ meant, questions about why Sam had reacted the way he had. Right then, though - just like with Sam - Jimmy’s personal guilt was keeping him from pinning Dean to the mat.
“Look, if I’d a known this was--”
“Jimmy, man…there’s no way you coulda known.” A sad smile overtook Dean’s lips. “I mean, no offense to any of this,” he continued, free hand motioning at the files of research on the table, the articles and pictures tacked to the walls, “but, me and Sam are working on a whole different scale these days. This is just crossfire in a bigger war, man.”
Jimmy nodded again, took a sip from one of the fresh beers he’d brought to the table along with the ice pack.
Dean had no idea what he should tell Jimmy, how much he should share. He didn’t have any idea himself what it meant - if it meant anything at all - but he wasn’t going to try figuring it out with anyone but his brother.
The door to the cabin opened, and Sam rushed in with a blast of cold night air.
Speak of the Devil. And Dean hated himself for the internal cringe the casual axiom caused. “Hey.”
“I’m not talkin’ to you yet,” Sam said, finger jabbing at Dean as he walked past the table and into the bathroom. The door slammed shut and the water in the sink went on.
Dean was a big fan of the facilities shut-out, personally; Sam only used it when it was too cold or too hot to be outside.
Jimmy rolled his beer bottle between his palms. “You want me to take off?”
Dean squinched his face. “No, man. Not gonna kick you outta your own place.”
“Shit,” Jimmy laughed, “I don’t sleep here unless I’m workin’ on somethin’.” He gave the front door a nod. “I been livin’ at Cheryl’s for the better parta two years. She hates to even stick her nose in here.”
“Still, man. Your place.”
Jimmy pushed himself up from his chair and snatched the empties that had convened on the table while they’d laid out most of the Maltby tale for Sam. “I was thinkin’ you and Sam could stay here if you want. Make it base. It’ll keep you close to all the research, save you money on the nearest fleabag.”
Dean gave him half a smile and lifted his beer in salute. “Thanks, Jimmy. I appreciate that. Think we’ll take you up on it, at least for tonight.”
Before Dean knew it, Jimmy had his coat on and was standing at the front door, working a couple of keys off a jumbled ring.
“I’ll give you a key for the front door and the work shed. I’ll be back in the morning, but, just in case. There’s more beer in the fridge, back-ups in the icebox in the workshop. If you get hungry, there’s some canned shit in the kitchen. You remember how to work the stove?” he asked, tossing the liberated keys to Dean one at a time.
He caught them and set them on the table. “I’ll remember if I need to. Thanks, Jimmy.”
“Least I can do,” Jimmy said, zipping up his jacket to the collar. He jutted his chin in the direction of the bathroom. “You guys gonna be okay?”
Dean’s eyebrows rose as he cocked his head. “Not even a blip on the radar these days. We’ll be fine.”
“All right,” Jimmy sighed, hand on the knob. He paused, and Dean watched the question form on his lips. “Whatta you think it means? The bones. The symbol.”
Dean dropped the melting ice pack to the table, ran a hand over the wetness it had left in his hair. “Honestly? I dunno, man. Not yet.”
“But it’s the same one…same one you saw in your vision. Same one Tabby drew before she…”
Dean nodded, biting at the corner of his mouth.
Jimmy pursed his lips, found the floor fascinating for several seconds, then broke the spell with a deep inhale. “You got my cell number. Call if you need anything. I’m not far.”
“Thanks again, man. Really.”
“Night,” Jimmy called as the door closed behind him.
Dean pressed both hands over his face and sucked in a deep breath, let it out with a roaring “Fuck!” He worked his fingertips into the corners of his eyes and waited for the water in the bathroom to shut off.
Hell was an interesting thing; real and conceptual at the same time. Reality had concept in a headlock the last six months or so, though, and Dean was beginning to think a lot more frequently about the deal he’d made. Until tonight, there’d been no regret in the consideration. He’d done what he’d done to watch out for Sam, to keep him safe.
Safe from what?
He’d made the deal thinking he’d at least get a chance to see their dad, to show him what he’d been willing to sacrifice to make things right and save Sam. He shook his head, took a long draw off his beer.
Christ, man. Look where following orders has gotten you all this time.
The Hell Dean saw in that cemetery was his Hell; a damnation of his character he regularly hid with the smoke and mirrors of hunting things and saving people. What he’d seen when those thirteen stone steps disappeared came on the heels of Arlee and Arizona, of Sam’s escape to Stanford. The vision screamed to Dean of his failure as a brother, as an individual: for the love of his father, he’d betrayed his loyalty to Sam - let him go without a fight, stood by their dad when sides had been chosen. Dean had never been able to reconcile it in himself or rectify it with his brother. There was something primal - base - in Dean’s desire to please their dad, to make him proud; a life-long struggle for worthiness in their broken family, their fractured world.
But Dean’s interpretation of his Maltby Hell had begun to shift. Just a little at first - an itch in his subconscious when Sam first told him about the visions.
Then Max in Saginaw.
The cabin, where old Yellow Eyes had worn their dad and told Sam he had plans for him and all the children like him.
Cold Oak and Wyoming had ratcheted up things a few dozen notches, and the photos Jimmy showed them had brought Maltby back to Dean with startling clarity; a 3-D, Technicolor, surround sound IMAX of his brother splashing blood down a mountain of yellow bones.
But the weight and ambiguity of the promise he’d made to their dad - to save Sam - made Dean an expert peddler of half-truths and edited information. He should have learned by now, but some lessons were harder than others.
The hiss of water from the bathroom cut off, and Dean swallowed back the remainder of his beer. He rebundled the last vestiges of ice in the towel Jimmy’d given him, returned it to the damp spot on the side of his head. He wasn’t above trying to temper his brother’s mood with a little guilt and pity.
He dropped his eyes when the bathroom door opened - you don’t stare down a tiger - and waited while Sam prowled the periphery of the cabin. The tension was palpable - felt like fire - and put the scent of smoke in Dean’s nose. He stared longingly at the empty beer bottle in his hand, wishing it full.
Sam made another circuit around the edge of the small space. Dean listened to his brother’s deep inhales and exhales, knew Sam was gearing up to start the battle.
His brother had his own pace with these kinds of things, and it was making Dean nervous how long Sam was taking to get to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The hunter in Dean - the brother in him, the protector - wanted to start mapping things out and fitting them together. He wanted answers and understanding, forgiveness, closure in whatever form it shook out.
“I wanna know why. I wanna know why you didn’t tell me.”
He figured the truth was as good as any armor; until he’d started stacking up the evidence, he’d been looking at things through the wrong end of the telescope. “I didn’t know.”
Sam’s voice boomed with indignation. “You didn’t know? You didn’t think it was important to maybe mention you had a vision of me in Hell, standing on a mountain of bones?”
“In my defense, you’re the one who--”
“In your defense?”
“I just mean,” stammered Dean, hand sweeping the air in front of him, “Maltby was supposed to cause visions. I didn’t think it--”
“No. You didn’t think.”
“I didn’t think,” Dean said with snarled punctuation, “that it was about you.” Punching back wasn’t really part of the whole honesty and truth plan, but the verbal fist jabbed at Sam before he could stop it. “It’s not always about you, Sam.”
Sam was no Ali, though; no rope-a-dope for him. “But you’ve been putting it together. I know how your brain works, Dean.” Sam’s hands made a violent run through his hair. “How long? Since Max? Since the cabin, with Dad?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, Dean. It matters.”
“Why?”
Sam’s long-distance accusation flew at Dean from the opposite side of the cabin. “For the last six months, you’ve been fighting me left and right, telling me how you don’t deserve to be alive, to be saved. Showing me. But I’m supposed to just roll over when you trade your life for mine? When that vision-- When you know what I could become?”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know, Sam, okay? Nothin’s gonna happen to you as long as I’m around.”
“Yeah, Dean. As long as you’re around. Another six months. You got a murder-suicide planned for your 364th night?”
He let it slide - had to. Sometimes it really was all about Sam. “The Yellow-Eyed Demon’s dead. You’re not even havin’ visions anymore, right?”
Sam covered his face with both hands, drew in a breath and blew it through the shutters of his palms. He dragged his hands past his cheeks, fingertips stopping to rest on his chin. “What’d Dad see?”
“What?”
“Dad had a vision, too, right? You came out of the crypt, and he was having a vision. You said he called my name.”
“Yeah.”
“So, what did he see?”
Dean felt suddenly sick. “I dunno.”
“You don’t know?”
“Am I not speaking clearly? I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.” What had their dad seen? And what had he known about Sam and the Yellow Eyed Demon when they’d shared Hell in that cemetery?
“And you didn’t ask?”
Dean flashed him a you’re kiddin’ me, right? smirk.
“He wouldn’t tell you.”
“Not for lack of me tryin’,” Dean said, rising. He crossed to the kitchen, kept Sam’s pacing figure in the corner of his eye as he fought the bumble bee thoughts that swarmed and stung.
“What happened?”
“Whatta you mean?” Dean asked, hooking a beer for himself and one for Sam.
“Jimmy said he tried to hide you and dad on Lummi Island. Why?” Sam asked, taking the offered beer.
* * *
Bellingham, Washington - 2002
“I don’t care if you call him Mahatma Gandhi, I’m not hidin’ ‘em out at my place.”
The whisper was sharp, adamant. It brought Dean closer to the surface of consciousness than he’d been in a while. It was Cheryl - the woman who sewed up his leg. Jimmy’s wife or girlfriend or something, he’d guessed.
“Look, baby. John’s not gonna go anywhere without Dean, but he needs to lay low. Cops have a description of him and the truck from those kids… Anybody could have seen him here in the past few days.”
“Jimmy--”
“I can’t have-- I don’t think I can handle the cops again so soon after Tabby. I don’t--”
“Sweetie. Jimmy. Listen to me. This is crazy, all of this… What happened with Tabby was--”
Her voice was soothing, and Dean turned toward it naturally, pulled by need. Yearning. The unexpected stretch brought a flare to his thigh, a moan to his lips. Made him suck in a breath that momentarily silenced the small cabin.
“Dean?” she said tentatively, warm voice and hands on him, then.
“Mmm,” was all he could manage in reply. He swallowed, and the sides of his dry throat stuck together. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and he grunted.
Cheryl’s hand moved from his shoulder, slid over the top of his head to the back of his neck.
“Here, sweetie. Can you open your eyes? Take a drink of water?”
He cracked his lids, let her ease him forward, and took two drinks of the cool watwer she offered. He nodded, and the cup was pulled away.
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” he croaked.
“Hey, sport. You’re lookin’ better,” Jimmy said, creeping behind Cheryl into Dean’s line of sight.
Dean brought up his hand to rub his eyes, paused for a second at the bandages. He couldn’t remember at first why his fingers were wrapped in gauze, then the cemetery came in flashes: the ghosts, the gate, the wrought-iron gashing his hand when he grabbed it.
“Where’s my dad?”
There was an uneasy sense of déjà vu sneaking up on him; he’d asked that before. Had he seen him? When light was streaming through the windows of the cabin like it was now?
“He’s out back in the workshop. I’ll get him,” said Jimmy.
When had they been in the cemetery? Was it last night?
Cheryl ran her hand through his hair, laid the back of it across his forehead. “Doesn’t feel like you’re running a fever. That’s good. How’s your head?”
He hurt his head, too? Fuck. He was feeling all muzzy, couldn’t get himself in the present.
“What--? H-how long have I--?” He tried to sit up, undamaged hand grabbing at the couch cushion for purchase.
Cheryl pushed gently against his chest, keeping him down. “Hold on there, Tiger. Just… Stay down, Dean.”
He hated it took her so little effort.
“You’ve been out of it for over twenty-four hours.”
Twenty-four hours? He couldn’t reconcile the time, wasn’t sure if he’d even talked to his dad since Maltby or if it had all been a dream. Maybe Maltby’d been a dream. He liked that idea quite a bit, but the throb in his leg and his right hand was telling him something different.
Cheryl was shaking something into her palm from a paper envelope.
“I don’t know where he got ‘em, but your dad managed to get some pain killers. It’s been a good six hours since you had any. You wanna take one?”
Dean tightly squeezed shut his eyes, tried to shake off the veil between him and the real world.
“Dean?”
“I don’t-- Where’s my dad?”
“Jimmy’s gettin’ him, sweetie. Hang on just a minute, okay?”
Something had happened. Something worse than his leg and his hand and his maybe-head. He’d seen Sammy, and Sam had been… There was fire. So much heat and blood and fire. His thoughts were sidetracked by a sudden urgency. “Gotta pee.”
“What was that?”
God, where was his dad? Dean’s bladder ached and stabbed in his belly. “I need to-- I gotta pee.”
“Oh. Oh!” Cheryl said with a quick blush. “Right. Okay. Hang on.” She leaned away from the couch, fumbled through a bag on the floor and sat back up with a plastic urinal in hand. “Here. Lemme…” She started to pull away the thin bedding bunched at his waist.
He grimaced, held the cotton edge of the sheet in his left hand. “No.”
“No?”
“I wanna... I have to get up.”
Cheryl frowned. “Dean, honey. I’m a nurse. Used to be one, anyway. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before. Besides, I’ve already seen everything,” she finished with a wink and a conciliatory half-smile.
“I just-- I wanna get up. Please.”
The half-smile turned into a frown. “It’s gonna hurt, hon. I don’t think--”
“‘S okay,” Dean said, and meant it. He needed to move, wake up, and pain was a pretty effective alarm clock. He started pushing his way into a sitting position.
Cheryl shook her head and helped him with a grumble -something about men being stubborn jerks - but Dean couldn’t make it out over his grunts and bit-back gasps.
The door to the cabin opened then, and John came in with Jimmy on his heels.
“What’s goin’ on?” his dad growled.
“He’s bein’ stubborn. Does that surprise you?” Cheryl asked as she moved aside, acid in her voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“What’s goin’ on, Dude?” his dad asked, dropping in a squat next to the couch.
“Gotta take a piss.”
John twisted to look at Cheryl. “You got that urinal thing?”
Her arms were crossed over her chest, nose squinched up in annoyance. “He said he won’t use it.”
“Dean,” his dad admonished, turning back to him.
“Please, Dad?”
“Should he be up?”
“Probably not,” Cheryl said from behind John, “but what do I know?” She threw up her hands and stalked into the kitchen, Jimmy right behind her.
His dad blew out a breath and shook his head, slipped one arm behind Dean’s shoulders, and rested the other at the crook of his knee. “You know this is gonna hurt, right?”
Dean nodded.
His dad slid his arm under his knees, and Dean sucked in a quick breath through clenched teeth. He threw his arm around his dad’s shoulders, and John answered with his own breathy wince.
Dean was confused until he recognized thick gauze pads under his dad’s t-shirt. Oh, right. I shot him in the back. Jesus. He snapped down on a yelp when his dad pulled up and clean-jerked him from the couch.
“You’re way too old for this, kid,” his dad grunted.
“Sorry.”
“So am I,” his dad ground out.
Eased onto the warped linoleum in front of the toilet, Dean was surprised - and a little embarrassed - to find himself naked when the sheet dropped away. But he couldn’t be too concerned. As soon as he was on his feet, the dizziness set in. He pretended it didn’t bother him when his dad’s hands hooked into his armpits, steadying him while he relieved himself. He stiffened with childish shame when the pungent scent of his piss - dark with evidence of his dehydration - drifted up from the commode. “Sorry,” he whispered.
“Stop apologizing,” his dad said from behind him.
Dean shook off, nodded when his dad asked if he was finished. He felt his dad’s hands slide on his back, felt the cotton sheet against his hip again, and moved to help secure it around his waist. Dean shifted a fraction of the weight he’d deferred to his right leg onto his injured left; the bathroom strobed bright white, and he slammed his front teeth over his lower lip.
“You ready to go back?”
“Hang on…” He clamped a hand around the cool lip of the porcelain sink, swallowed thickly, and cleared the rattle in his chest.
“Lemme walk.”
“Dean,” his dad breathed, like a rebuke.
“Got to sooner or later, right?”
“You sure?”
Dean popped a quick nod. “Sooner’s probably better, I’m guessin’.”
John moved to Dean’s left side, got an arm across his back. One hand hooked under his pit, the other wrapped around the wrist Dean flung over his shoulder. They inched sideways through the bathroom door and into the hall. Dean begged a second to catch his breath, and then they finished the snail’s crawl to the couch. When he was settled, when the room stopped its angry spin, Dean saw Cheryl make her way back over, a jelly jar filled with a cloudy liquid in her hand.
“Dean, sweetie. Drink this.”
He shook his head, knew his voice would betray the calm nonchalance he was trying to project. He squeezed his eyes shut when the cabin tilted on its moorings.
“Drink it, Dean,” his dad’s voice cut through the shifting sands in his head.
He opened his eyes and saw the glass in front of him, wrapped in his dad’s fingers. Dean’s gaze lifted from the sedative-spiked brew, locked onto his dad’s over the rim of the glass. “Need to keep my head clear. I need to know what happened.”
Dean wanted to believe the stricken look on his dad’s face was concern for his health, but it could have been regret or confusion; all of the above were equally foreign attire for John Winchester.
“Please, Dean,” his dad said, “if we need to move fast, I need to know you can.”
He held his dad’s stare for another long beat, then followed orders. Took the glass and choked down its grainy bitter contents. He coughed on the tail of it, wiped the back of his wrist across his lips and gritted his teeth. “Tell me what happened.”
Dean watched his dad’s gaze drop to his lap where he sat, fingers of his right hand twisting the gold band on his left. He waited out his deep inhale of breath, listened as it hissed back out between his dad’s drawn lips. The first foamy wave of the narcotic flowed onto the shore of his wakefulness then, and he blinked against the advance. “Dad…”
Jimmy stepped forward and dropped a hand on John’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze. “I’m gonna run Cheryl home. Make some phone calls.”
Cheryl slid from behind Jimmy and addressed the back of John’s head. “There’s no sign of infection right now, but if you can get some antibiotics as easily as you got the pain killers, it wouldn’t hurt. For you, too.”
Dean watched his dad answer with a silent nod.
Jimmy slipped his arm around Cheryl’s waist. “I’ll deal with that. You just lay low, John. Please. No sense addin’ a drug deal to the list of possible charges.”
His dad winced, shoulders hunching, then nodded again. “Thanks, Jimmy.”
The slow heat of the drugs warmed through Dean, traveled the length of his arms and legs as Jimmy and Cheryl made their quiet departure. His left thigh was still putting up some resistance, but that was all right; it was keeping Dean awake and focused on his dad. “What happened?” he asked again when the cabin door closed.
His dad scrubbed his hands down his face, bristled fingers through his beard, and traded another deep in-and-out of warm afternoon air. “What do you remember?”
“I remember the salt and burn goin’ FUBAR, me comin’ out of the crypt and taking you down on the stairs. I remember you callin’ Sam’s name, and then…”
“And then?”
Dean fought back the panic and fear that rose in his throat like bile. He didn’t want to tell his dad what he’d seen, what Sam had said. Didn’t want to speak of fire and blood and self-recrimination.
“Dean?”
“I saw… Sammy was there. He was… There were these bones, and flames. A lot of blood.” He shook his head and brought his hand to his mouth.
“What did he say? Did he say anything?”
Sam had been thrust into Dean’s arms at four years old. Take your brother outside as fast as you can! Don't look back! Now, Dean, go! And he hadn’t looked back, hadn’t questioned the weight of the responsibility, even when he thought it might pull him under. But maybe he hadn’t done such a good job keeping Sam safe. Maybe he should have kept running the night of the fire.
“Dean?”
Because that’s what Sam meant, he was sure. Dean had the power all along to save him, save them both. Take them away from the life their dad made for them; hunting and prowling and chasing ghosts - real and imagined.
“What did he say, Son?”
“He said…he said I should have saved him. I could have saved him, and I didn’t.”
His dad pushed up from the chair beside the couch, fingers linked across the nape of his neck. He paced to the other side of the small cabin, kept his back to Dean. “What about the bones?”
“What?”
“Was there anything… Do you remember anything about the bones?”
He tried to think, but the pain killers were creeping in like cemetery ground fog. He sunk back into the pillow behind his head, tried to remember the vision with Sam’s face and words blocked out. “There was-- Some of them had a…pattern on them.”
“What kind of pattern?”
Dean could tell by the volume of his voice his dad had moved back toward him. “Like a…” His left hand made lazy arcs in the air. “Lines and stuff. Like a lightning bolt.”
He heard a rustling of paper, and the chair banged up against the side of the couch. He sucked in a breath against the throb it set off in his thigh, and then his dad was shoving paper and a pen into his hands.
“Draw it.”
“Huh?” Dean asked, cracking his lids. His dad looked frantic, agitated and expectant.
“Draw the pattern. Please.”
Dean nodded lightly, tried to straighten the jumbled line of thought in his head. What was so important about some pattern, when Sam had stood atop a mountain of death, spewing blood from his eyes and fingertips?
“Please, Son.”
He turned his attention to the paper in his lap, got a stiff grip around the pencil with his bandaged right hand. It wasn’t exact, but he did the best he could. When he finished, he tilted the rough sketch toward his dad.
“Like this, I guess. It wasn’t on all the bones, just some of the skulls. Right here,” he said, and tapped his forehead with the capped end of the ballpoint.
His dad snatched the drawing from his hands, ran his fingers over his mouth. “Sonuvabitch.”
“What?”
His dad didn’t respond, was a hundred miles away; territory Dean couldn’t map.
The chair wobbled on its two back legs, nearly tipping when his dad popped up again, cramming the sketch into his jeans pocket. He brushed a hand through his hair, fevered eyes darting across the cabin.
“Dad?”
He pointed at him. “You stay put.”
“What?”
“I mean it, Dean,” he said, crossing to the weapons bag on the floor by the door. He came back with a Colt. Popped the clip and checked the load.
“Jimmy said-- Where are you goin’?”
His dad clacked back the slide, then handed him the gun butt-first. “You’ve got a full mag plus one in the chamber.”
Dean pawed at the sheet gathered at his hips, shook his head lightly. “I can’t-- Dad, what’s goin’ on?” His tongue was heavy in his mouth, as cottony as his head suddenly felt. Time stutter-stepped, and Dean felt the cool steel of the gun pressed into his palm. Felt his dad’s insistent fingers wrap his lax ones around the grip.
“I’ll be back,” he said from the cabin door.
* * *
Bellingham, Washington - 2007
Sam’s jaw was clenched. “He drugs you, puts a gun in your hand, and fucking takes off.” He shook his head. “Typical.”
Dean rubbed absently at his left thigh, didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure he should; Sam’s anger was shifting from him to their dad and - not that Dean was playing him - it was nice to have the laser focus of Sam’s discontent on someone else.
“The same symbol in Jimmy’s photos?”
Dean nodded. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“So, what is it?” Sam asked.
“I dunno.”
“You don’t know?”
Dean shrugged. “Never really researched it.”
“You never--” Sam made a disgusted noise in his throat.
Dean could feel the anger shifting back to him. He twitched uncomfortably in his chair.
“But Dad thought it was something.”
“I guess.”
“So where did he go?”
“Look, whatever they gave me took me out. I woke up about two hours later when Jimmy was pryin’ the Colt outta my hand.”
“And Dad was nowhere to be found.”
“Jimmy didn’t look, and I was in no condition to go anywhere.”
Sam ran his hands through his hair. “I’m still not getting all of this. What happened at the cemetery? What’s all the shit about cops and charges and laying low?”
Dean drained the rest of his beer, set the empty on the table and wiped the bottle’s moisture from his fingers across the nape of his neck.
“Dean?”
He blew out a breath. “After the…” He waved his hand back and forth, cutting choppily through the space in front of him. “…visions in the cemetery,” he cocked his head to one side. “Dad kind of lost it.”
Sam moved closer, tried to win some eye contact, but Dean wouldn’t give it over.
“Lost it like how?”
Dean shook his head. Blew out a breath through his nose. “Like, freaked. Lit the place up.”
“The cemetery?”
“Yeah.” He rose, avoided looking Sam in the eye, and crossed to the mini-fridge.
“How do you-- How did he--?”
Dean lifted his brows and tilted his head, cracked the top off a fresh beer. “Yeah. I don’t have a fuckin’ clue. I was out cold, remember?” he prompted, then paused to take a swig from the cold bottle. “Donatin’ a couple pints of A-neg to the local soil.”
“But I mean--”
“Look, Sam,” Dean said, mildly exasperated with all the questions, but more so with the frustration of the memories themselves. “Dad was never real good at the fill-in-the-blanks game. Everything I know I got from Jimmy, and what he knew was what he was able to get out of Dad that night.”
He passed the table on his way back into the main room and instead flopped onto the lumpy couch along the wall, swallowed hard when the sense memory of the cushions beneath him brought his past to his present.
“So, what did he tell you?” Sam asked, dropping his own long frame onto the futon opposite Dean.
The nail of Dean’s thumb found the loose edge of the beer label, picked and pried while he tried to piece the tale. “He said Dad showed up, kicked in the door. Had me slung over his shoulder, unconscious, both of us covered in blood.” He paused to take a swig of beer, swallowed hard. “Jimmy said he was totally out of it. Reekeda smoke, yellin’ about… Said he wasn’t gonna let it happen.”
“Let what happen?” Sam asked leaning forward, arms balanced on his knees.
Dean looked up and made the first honest eye contact since he’d started talking. “I don’t know, Sammy. Maybe--” He shook his head. “I’m startin’ to wonder when Dad knew what he knew.”
“About me, you mean.”
It pained him to nod, but he did. Choked on the almost-whisper of “Yeah.”
Sam’s head bobbed a quick confirmation of understanding, lips pursed and brow furrowed.
“Jimmy said Dad was barely coherent, freaked him out because of what happened with Tabby. Managed to get out of him that he…I dunno. He grabbed a gas can from the truck, I guess. Doused the area, lit it up. I figure that’s when I came to the first time, right after he set the fire--”
“But why did he--?”
“I dunno, Sam. Shit, when have I ever understood half the reasons for Dad doin’ what he did? I don’t know what he saw in his vision, but if he had any clue about the Yellow Eyed Demon and you and the rest of the Special Kids? Who knows what that woulda set off in him.”
Dean could see his brother’s teeth working the corner of his mouth. He wanted to be able to give him the answers they both needed. It cut deeper - burned harder - to have it wrapped up in flames like it was. Fire and Winchesters? That was a multi-faceted, long-standing, fucked-up relationship right there.
“So, the cops?”
Dean shrugged. “Some teenagers playin’ pants-optional were parked down the road from the graveyard. Saw the flames eat up a couple of cedar trees, caught a black Chevy short-bed runnin’ hell for leather…” He threw up a hand. “Kinda hard to explain away four grave desecrations and settin’ a public cemetery on fire.”
“But Dad took off when you showed him the symbol.”
“Yeah, like I said.”
“Where did he go?”
“I told you, man, I don’t know. He showed up about half an hour after Jimmy did. The two of them got into it, Jimmy yellin’ about the cops and Dad bein’ reckless and outta control, and Dad was hittin’ back with a buncha ‘You know I gotta find out’ bullshit--”
“Find out what?”
“I don’t know, Sam!” He did mean to yell, but he was angry at himself. Felt on trial for once again letting down his brother. But - fuck - he’d nearly died, hadn’t he? He wasn’t thinking clearly at the time, and he certainly wasn’t thinking there was any connection between a Hell hallucination and his brother being the Boy King of the Underworld.
Until now.
“They took it outside after a couple of minutes. I guess I musta passed out again ‘cause I don’t remember how it wrapped up.”
“And you have no idea what that symbol means,” Sam said with a wave toward the table.
It was an accusation, and Dean winced a little inwardly; Sam had every right to be pissed and frustrated. “Two days later, soon as I could walk without fallin’ over, Dad got a bug up his ass about Michigan. Some bullshit gig with a chupacabra. We left the next day. I never had a chance to dig around.”
Sam gave him a pinched understanding look, almost as if to say, 'Never had time, or never made time?' Dean wasn't sure which of those was the truth. He took the awkward pause as a cue to drain his beer dry.
“So, what are we doin’ here?” Sam asked on an exhale.
“That’s a good question. Not one I have the answer to right now, though.”
Sam’s fingers pinched and plucked at his lower lip. Dean scratched absently at his belly.
“Look. Jimmy didn’t call us here for nothin’. There’s more he’s holdin’ back, I’m pretty sure. And if I hadn’t passed out like a fuckin’ pussy, he woulda laid it all out for us tonight. I say we hit the sack, hear him out in the morning, and make a decision then.”
Dean didn’t figure he’d be getting much sleep; he’d be trying to puzzle out the John Winchester Sneaky Bastard timeline for the next hour at least. He didn’t want to say it, but he wanted to stick around now. If the symbol was connected to Sam and the Yellow Eyed Demon, if Bellingham or Maltby or Lummi Island held any secrets that might give Dean a lead on saving his brother, he wanted to know. He just didn’t want Sam to know he wanted to know.
“Yeah. Okay,” Sam said, head shaking back and forth as if he was trying to shake up a blizzard of clarity in the snowglobe of his brain.
“You can take the futon. I’m kinda partial to the couch.”
Once he fell asleep, Dean dreamed about Maltby, but it was all jumbled up with Montana and South Dakota; a fucking travelogue through three shitty states.
It started at the staircase in the Maltby Cemetery. Him and his dad, leaning on their shovels and shooting the shit. But then Dad’s eyes flared yellow, and he took a step forward, grinning.
“You know what’s funny, Dean?”
“Whassat?”
“How you never seem to learn. You keep makin’ the same mistakes, over and over.”
His dad’s breath smelled like clover, and it made Dean’s stomach clench.
“Yeah, that’s hilarious,” he said.
“I mean, you keep givin’ and givin’, and me and Sammy keep takin’ and takin’. I bet you’re wonderin’ when you get paid off for all that sacrifice.”
Dean flinched. “Hadn’t really crossed my mind.”
The dirt at the bottom of the thirteen-step stairway rumbled, and he glanced down to see the soil rolling beneath his boots. Black blood rose in pools, filling in the space between chunks of earth. When he looked up, his dad’s eyes were back to normal, genuine concern painted all over his face.
“Aw, shit. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”
Dean felt the old familiar ache around his eye, like it had never lessened, never faded away. His hand went up and, sure enough, came down bloody.
“Jesus, Dad…”
He snapped awake, whispered curses falling from his mouth.
The cabin was dark, just residual orange from the cooling woodstove in the corner, but for a few seconds everything was blacker than black through his left eye. He blinked a half dozen times before it evened out. “Shit.”
“Dean?”
Shit. “Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s goin’ on?”
“Nothin’, Sam. Go back to sleep.”
“You sure?”
No. “Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“You already asked me that.”
“What’d you say?”
“I said, ‘go back to sleep, Sam.’”
“’Kay.”
Dean climbed out of bed and felt his way to the bathroom. Relieved himself of the night’s beer. He thought for a second maybe he should have had a few more; he never dreamed when he passed out.
He found his way back to the couch, shimmied under the covers. It was freezing in the cabin, and Dean envied the down sleeping bag into which Sam was snugged, envied the even snores he heard coming from his brother. He rolled onto his side, yanked the sheet and blankets over his head and pulled up his knees, created a cavern for his breath to warm. Deep inhales, slow exhales, until everything blurred and drifted away.
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