Supernatural: Choices (1/1)
Disclaimer-Characters belong to Eric Kripke. No copyright infringement intended. Any similarity to events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Author's Notes-Dedicated to J, who puts up with late-night phone calls and shows that the best big brothers aren't just the ones on TV. Many thanks to Cindy Ryan for the beta!!
Spoilers-Nothing specific. Pre-series.
Feedback-Always greatly appreciated.
Choices-Life lessons over grave desecrations.
~~~
He had to stop for a moment, to catch his breath. He shoved the shovel down into the dirt at his feet and placed his hands on his hips. His arms were sore, the muscles still twitching from the exertion. His lungs burned as they filled with the frigid air in the dead of the night.
His little brother aimed the flashlight at his face for a brief moment. “You want me to take over?”
He shook his head. “S'okay, Sammy. I've almost got it anyway,” he said, still winded. It was so cold that he could see his breath when he spoke, but he'd long since abandoned his leather jacket.
“I can help, y'know.”
"And you are,” he said, wiping at the sweat that rolled down from his temples, replacing it with dirt. “You're manning the light and keeping watch.”
Sam, all of twelve, looked at the shotgun on the ground beside him. “Yeah.”
“Won't be much longer.” Exhaling, he picked up the shovel again and continued his descent into the earth. He was sure he had to be down at least five feet by now. He was practically eye-level with Sam's worn sneakers. He made a mental note to find the kid new shoes when he had some spare cash. Maybe it was time to start hustling lunch money at school again, Dad's order to the contrary be damned.
“Dean?”
He grunted as another shovelful of dirt found its way to the growing pile he'd been building for the last few hours.
“Why do we do this?”
Dean glanced at Sam, who was leaning back against a headstone. “You know why.”
“But, this ghost didn't kill Mom.”
“No, but it's been trying to kill other people. It's succeeded in half a dozen 'unexplained' deaths in the past twenty years alone, maybe even more.”
“But, how is that our job?”
“'Cause no one else knows what we do,” Dean said simply, continuing with the task at hand.
“So, if no one knows, no one would know if we stopped.”
“Bobby would. Jefferson would. Caleb... Pastor Jim... You want me to keep going?” he asked, continually adding to the dirt pile.
Sam narrowed his eyes at his big brother. “You know what I mean.”
“Okay, Sammy. Say you're at school and there's a big high school senior jerk hassling an eighth grade girl. What do you do?”
“Dean--”
Dean could already hear the whine in his little brother's voice, and, as such, he didn't give him the opportunity to protest any further. “C'mon now. Humor me.”
Sam pondered his options for a brief moment. “I'd tell you.”
“Why would you tell me?” he asked, still digging.
“Because the jerk is probably a friend of yours.”
Dean chuckled but shook his head. “I'm not there. School is deserted except for you, this pretty little blonde chick and the senior bully.”
“No teachers?”
“Nope. No teachers, no administrators, no janitors... No authority figures of any kind whatsoever.”
Sam sighed.
“She's crying now, Sammy. He's intimidating the hell out of her. Calling her names. She's so scared she's petrified.” He heaved another shovelful out of the ground. “What do you do?”
“Tell him to pick on someone his own size.”
“Why?” Dean asked.
“Because, you don't pick on girls. Not like that.”
Dean nodded approvingly. “So, the guy starts advancing on you. Now what do you do?”
Sam sighed, looking away from his brother, who was nearly swallowed whole in the grave he was digging. “I don't want to fight him.”
“Sometimes, you don't have a choice. He's mad. He's ready to rumble and you took his fun away. He can't harass that girl.”
“Why aren't there adults around? Or other kids?”
It was Dean's turn to sigh. “Because they've all been killed by Old Man Riggs here,” he said, digging deeper. “And I'm here, trying to salt and burn the creep. And Dad's out there, drawing the spirit off from the last three people in town: you, the girl, and the guy looking to pound you into the ground.”
“So, I run him out here to the graveyard. To you.”
“I'm busy,” he said, pausing for a moment to glance at him.
“So, we'll swap. I'll dig. You fight.”
“I just got abducted by aliens.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. “There are no such things.”
“Fine, then. I fall over dead. I manage to lop off my toes with the shovel and bleed out. I'm long gone,” he said.
“Dad.”
Dean's next shovelful was angrily tossed aside. “Dad gets killed by this son of a bitch because I didn't get to salt and burn 'im before I died.”
Sam's shoulders slumped.
“C'mon, Sam. He's just a dumb jock. What do you do?”
Letting out a long, dramatic breath, he answered sullenly: “Kick his ass.”
Dean nodded. “You use what Dad taught you. You use what I taught you. You save the girl and you protect yourself. Because... why?”
“Because you and Dad died, apparently,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Dean shook his head. “Because, one, it's right.” A dirt clump landed to the left of Sam. “And two, because you can.” Another clump landed to the right.
Sam shook his head. “Just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to.”
“So you'd let little blonde Susie Q get hurt? You'd let the jerk jock get away with it?”
“Why not?”
“Because it's wrong, that's why. Somebody's hurt and on the side of the road. You gonna keep going? Or are you gonna try to stop the bleeding until the paramedics arrive?”
Sam was annoyed at Dean's analogies. “But, Old Man Riggs didn't kill Mom.”
“We don't know what killed Mom. Maybe it was Riggs. Maybe he broke pattern, jumped state lines, and killed Mom when we were kids.”
“Ghosts don't do that,” Sam said. “They can't.”
“But, you do know what they can do.”
Sam huffed. “I don't want to do this forever, Dean. I don't want to spend Thursday nights in cemeteries looking out for cops while you dig someone up for the rest of my life.”
“Then, don't. Then, turn the other way while demons run rampant, when banshees terrorize, and when ghosts kill. By all means, ignore the truth.”
“I don't want this life!”
“What makes you think I do?” Dean asked, snapping as the digging was forgotten. “What makes you think this is my dream? It's just facts, Sam. I know the truth. And while I wish the both of us didn't, while I wish Mom was still here, those are facts I can't control. You can only control what you do with them, what choices you make based off of them. I'm not going to walk by when someone needs help. I'm not going to let them die if I know how to save them. All the people we help... there's no one else in the world who can save them. It's either us or nobody.” He looked exhaustedly at the pit he'd been digging. “This son of a bitch kills people and the police think it's someone they can arrest. We both know that's not the case. So what do you want to do, really? You want us to pack up, leave town, and let Riggs continue to stump Barney Fife? Or do you wanna be the hero? Save the day? The pay is crap. The motels are crap. The food... is crap. The existence isn't that great. But I can sleep at night knowing that I did what I could.”
“This doesn't bother you?” he asked, shining the light at the bottom of the open grave.
“Bones don't hurt,” Dean said, digging again. He grinned as he finally hit the top of the coffin.
“It's a cemetery. Holy ground. It's someone's dad or brother or son...”
Dean tossed the shovel out and accepted the crowbar Sam offered. “You think they'd be happy knowing what he was up to? Dear ole pops, murdering people?”
Sam shook his head.
“Didn't think so.” With a few quick movements, the top came away easily. Dean winced as the foul-smelling air reached his nose. Breathing shallowly, he climbed out of the grave. He watched as Sam got to his feet.
Moving Dean's jacket aside, Sam dug through the duffel bag and removed a canister of salt and a bottle of lighter fluid. He liberally salted the casket contents then followed up with a thorough saturation of the accelerant.
Dean pulled the matchbook from his pants pocket. He'd snagged it at the roadside diner where they'd eaten earlier that night. He started to open it, then stopped, offering it to Sam.
Cautiously, Sam looked at his brother's outstretched hand. Normally Dean dealt with the fire. Dean was the one to actually “kill” the spirit. Sam had occasionally shoveled, but never more than a foot or two down from the surface. And, he always salted the corpses, but he'd never been the one to finish the job. Slowly, he took the book and removed a single match. He lit it and watched the flame in the darkness for a moment.
“You know that dropping that match is the only way to save this town,” Dean said quietly. “What do you do?”
As the flame approached Sam's fingers, he tossed it down into the open grave. The two brothers watched as the shriveled corpse snapped and sparked, as the remaining bits of flesh burned off the charring bones.
“You saved a hundred lives. Maybe more.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Not really.”
“You think he'd stop? If you and me and Dad weren't here to stop him?”
“No.”
“Of course he wouldn't have. You did a good thing here. The right thing. I...” Dean wasn't good with praise. He never really received any. But, what he was about to say was a true statement. “I'm proud of you, Sammy.”
Sam looked up at his big brother, at his freckled face in the crackling firelight. Dean looked old. Older than sixteen.
Feeling Sam's eyes on him, Dean glanced over and smiled.
It wasn't the cocky smile he gave to his teachers. It wasn't the flirtatious smile he flashed at girls. It wasn't the one he had before re-telling some joke he'd heard. It was genuine, and that was something Sam rarely saw. He smiled in return, as they both leaned against a headstone, watching the fire slowly burn out.
~~~
End.