The Lights of Home Part 6 & Epilogue
Part 6: When I Am Older Than These Small Goddamned Hills
The mound was just as creepy as Dean remembered, but this time Sam seemed to sense the malevolence of it, too. They circled the unnaturally symmetrical hill a couple of times while Sam recited some generic opening spells he had picked up somewhere and stored in his freaky brain. Fortunately this witch wasn't particularly creative, or at least not very paranoid, because the second time around a dark, dank mouth gaped open in the hill on the side farthest from the trail. It was full dark now, the January moon just a cold sliver above, and Dean raised his favorite flashlight, gave Sam a grim nod, and stepped inside.
Like the candy store (and wasn't that a weird comparison to be making), everything felt smaller now, less overwhelming, less towering. With adult eyes, Dean was able to see the familiar trappings of witchery, not a mass of chaos. Understanding what this strange and awful stuff was did a lot to give him a handle on the weirdness, though it was still freaky and disturbing and, yeah, really disgusting, too.
They knocked over the altar, cut the animal corpses down from the ceiling, defaced the symbols carved into the walls, ripped pages out of the books. Salt and lighter fluid everywhere, and they baptized the entire place in cleansing fire. It felt good. It must have taken the new witch years to rebuild this place, to dig out the layers of salt and ash that John Winchester had left behind and incant the dozens and dozens of spells it would have taken to make it suitable for black magic again. And they destroyed it all in a little over half an hour.
Afterward, they hid just inside the treeline and waited, leaning against a couple of sturdy trees, watching the fire flare in the dark doorway of the mound. The silence was comfortable, but Dean figured it couldn't possibly last. No, Sammy was working up to something.
So it was almost a relief when Sam finally spoke up. "Hey. I brought these."
Dean looked over, eyebrows raising, and saw the half-empty bag of Dum-Dums in his brother's hand. "Awesome." He grabbed a fistful with the hand not holding his gun and stuck them in the pocket of his jacket, then pulled the wrapper off a sucker with his teeth and popped the candy in his mouth. Grape. Not his favorite, but it would do.
Sam did the same, then hummed appreciatively. "Mm, cream soda."
"Ugh. I'd rather actually drink a cream soda. Dude, I will never understand the flavoring of candy like other candy. What is the point of a bubblegum-flavored jellybean or a licorice-flavored sucker? Freakin' useless."
Sam nodded solemnly, as if this was the most important conversation they had ever had. "Cotton candy is the worst though."
"True."
"But I like the soda flavors. Remember Bottle Caps? Delicious. I should have gotten some of those at the candy store."
Dean tilted his head in interest. "Oh, I didn't see those."
"Man, they had pretty much everything there, I'm sure. Even retro candies from the sixties and stuff."
"Yeah." Dean looked back over the mound.
For awhile they sucked their candy in companionable silence. But then Sam had to go and ruin everything, of course.
"About Coach Peters..."
"Dude, no!" Dean responded so quickly and so vociferously that his current Dum-Dum launched out of his mouth and landed somewhere in the bracken. He didn't immediately replace it, his mouth feeling sour and heavy. "I don't want to talk about this. Not ever, you got me? It wasn't that big a deal. He didn't even...he didn't even..." Oh, come on. If it wasn't a big deal, he should at least be able to say the word. Dean spit it out like a stone. "He didn't even rape me. It was just some groping and humping in the equipment closet. Not a big deal."
Hearing himself lay it out like that, in the crude language Dean used for everything, should have made it smaller, more ordinary. Just a thing. But the words lay between them, heavy and ugly. Sick.
He turned his back on Sam, unwilling to see even the faint expression that was visible in the flickering, dying red light. He could still feel his brother's silence behind him, though, thick and accusing.
"If it's not a big deal, why does it still bother you?"
Oh, and that was Sam's reasonable voice, so carefully flat and neutral. As if anything about this situation was remotely reasonable.
"Because I'm a wimp, obviously. It was a long time ago and it wasn't that important and it shouldn't...it shouldn't..."
There weren't words. Dean stopped, his heart clogging up his throat. This was so stupid.
Sam stepped up closer to his back, hovering, too close, his breath warm on the back of Dean's neck. His voice was low, calm. "Dean, you were molested. It's a big deal. It's important."
"No, it's not..." Dean could hear the weakness in his voice and he hated it fiercely, but he had no strength to draw from. "Yeah, okay, it was molestation, I know the word, all right? I was molested. But not...not severely."
"Any is severely, Dean. Any is severely."
And there was Sam's hand on his shoulder again, warm and strong. Dean leaned back into it without thinking, wanting some of that warmth and strength to seep through the layers of jacket and shirts, to fill this cold spot that had been living in his chest ever since he was eleven years old.
"Dad never took you to a counselor, did he?" If there had been the slightest note of accusation or bitterness in Sam's voice, Dean would have wrenched away, possibly punched him, done anything to escape this horrifically awkward conversation. But there was only concern there, only love for his pathetic older brother, and Dean couldn't reject that. "He figured that we could handle it on our own, the Winchester way. He did his best, I know that. But Dean, man, you need more. You need more."
Dean leaned more heavily on his tree, arms hanging loose and heavy at his sides, eyes aching as he stared at the fire. Sam stepped up again, a little closer, a little warmer, his hand pressing in a little harder, a little more insistently.
"It still bothers you," Sam said. "It still...it still hurts you. And that means there's still a wound there, don't you get it? It doesn't have to keep lying open like this. We can do something about it. Please let me do something about it."
A note of desperation in his baby brother's voice now, and Dean couldn't stand that, he couldn't. "Okay," he whispered, then cleared his throat, said it again. "Okay. You win, Sammy. You win this one."
"No, Dean." Sam gripped his shoulder tight and hard, but Dean felt relief and triumph in it. "We win this one. Both of us."
~*~
The night was too dark for moonlight, but the figure approaching through the trees seemed to be lit up anyway. Or maybe it was sucking in the small light around it like a black hole, visible by its absence. Sam squared his shoulders and drew in a steady breath, one hand on Ruby's knife and the other on the holy water. Dean held his favorite pistol in both hands, tense and ready at his shoulder.
A low mutter reached them from the doddering creature, faint and shuddering, and goosebumps shivered to life across Sam's shoulders and neck. The voice was shaky and old, the cadence rambling, cyclical, devoid of meaning. It sounded utterly insane.
The witch's gait sped up, stumbling into a run, when at last she became aware of the dying flames still lighting the forest around the mound. The rambling sped up, too, gained in volume until it became a shout, a catalog of curses and imprecations and oaths of vengeance. The witch was wearing a robe, tattered edges flying behind her as she ran. Then the figure came around to their side of the mound, all but dancing in rage, staring at the fiery remnants of the altar room with hands flying to face. Pudgy fingers picked restlessly at the edge of fabric, and the cowl came back, and Sam stared.
The witch was a man, maybe in his fifties but seeming much older, crow's feet and deep lines of hard living digging into his face in uneven crags, a landscape drenched with age and weathered with ill will. Sam blinked. He seemed so familiar. It must have been that small-town feeling, the sense of knowing every face you see even if you can't match a name to it.
Dean stuttered forward a step, then another, out of the trees, apparently without realizing he was doing it. The handgun drooped to point at the ground. "What the... M-Mr. Stoller? Is that you?"
Sam blinked and stared a little harder as the man whirled to face him, automatically sifting through the old memories Castiel had restored. The Daniel Stoller in the summer of 1990 was a fit, strong fellow, grinning joyfully as he spent time with his son, the sun lighting his face, tall and broad in Sammy's child's eye. This man...this man was ruined.
Daniel Stoller blinked at Dean, eyes wide and round in the strange light, mouth slack. Sores marked the skin around around his lips, huge and blistered, like chemical burns, and more blemishes sneaked around the edge of his hairline and pocked his fish-white skin. Magic, Sam thought, magic like radiation, like death.
Then the blankness vanished from Stoller's face in a wave of heat, replaced with twisted rage. "You." He pointed a shaking finger at Dean, gnarled and ancient before his time. "You killed my wife!"
Dean shook his head numbly. "No, man. I would never."
"Don't lie to me, young man!" Sam almost could have laughed at the tone, so very like any outraged adult scolding a recalcitrant youngster, but there was nothing funny about the madness poisoning Daniel Stoller's voice. "I know where you were, where my wife sent you that day! And then we went looking and you were gone, but I found her body." He stalked forward, thin legs shaking under his beer gut. "I found my dead wife, her body burnt and blackened, lost in the fire. Do you know what that's like? To see the woman you love destroyed in flames? Do you have any concept of what a terrible, unthinkable thing that is?"
Dean was ashen now, backing away from the aggressive man without realizing it. His hands hung limp at his sides, and Sam was suddenly fuming, his breath spurting out in hot pants. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. This crazy old witch had no right to taunt Dean, hurt him, spiteful and cruel with fire behind him and moonlight above. The pure wrongness of the whole thing was bringing Sam to a slow burn, cold and furious.
"I never wanted that," Dean said. He paused, gathered himself, and then the Dean Sam knew was back, eyes hard and glinting. He raised his gun, hands steady, and Daniel Stoller halted in his tracks. "I never wanted that," Dean said again, his voice harsh, no longer wavering. "She attacked me. She was going to hurt my brother. I had no choice but to fight back."
Stoller snarled, wiped the saliva from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "No choice? You chose this. You chose what you are, che-la-po-la. You killed my wife and my son died the next day, just faded away white and empty. Only just turned twelve years old! The doctors couldn't explain it, said he had no blood, said it was medically impossible, but I knew who to blame. You took my family and I had nothing left."
Dean tilted his head slightly, watching the crazed man through the gun sight. "I'm sorry about your son. It was your wife who killed him, though. Dad said she must have been draining him for years, using his blood. Must've bonded him to her, so when she went so did he." He shuddered, almost theatrically, though Sam knew that this disgust was entirely genuine. "Freakin' witches, man. Gotta love 'em."
He stalked sideways, keeping his gun and his eyes trained on Daniel Stoller, glancing over to the mouth of the cavern. "So you picked up where she left off, huh? Strange decision, buddy, though I guess it takes all kinds."
Stoller drew himself straight, then, pulling in whatever shreds of dignity he had left as he stalked after Dean, chasing him, though he kept a wary distance from the gun. "He came to me at the mound while I cradled my dead wife in my arms. Her skin was black and peeling and came off under my fingers, and then my master spoke to me. He offered me the power to avenge her. I could not refuse."
"No choice, huh?" Dean smirked, took a couple more steps. "Guess we have that in common, don't we?"
"I'm nothing like you." The witch shook, fists clenched, and raised his arms toward Dean in a stance that Sam instantly recognized. He was channeling power, from the mound, from the demon that controlled him, from something. And he was focusing it all on Dean.
"You got nothing left, dude," Dean said, calm and sure. "Don't make me kill you, now. I don't wanna do it."
Stoller smirked. "Something we don't have in common, then. Because I definitely want to kill you."
He began to chant, powerful words roiling through his thin chest, resonating eerily. It sounded like Algonquin, probably the Miami dialect, Sam noted with some distant part of his mind even as he nearly froze in alarm. Black smoke was pouring out of the mouth of the cavern, too thick and heavy to be from the now-guttering fire. It poured around Daniel Stoller in two thick waves, and then it poured into him, filling him, until his eyes began to glow red and black.
Dean fired his gun, with absolutely no effect, until Stoller waved a hand and he was knocked to the ground. But now Sam saw what Dean's careful maneuvering had done. He had moved them back into the trees, backed them around until the witch was only a few feet from where Sam still crouched hidden, unnoticed and ready to fight.
Stoller glided toward where Dean lay, grinning with gleeful insanity, his movement no longer shaky and weak with the demon (demons?) now filling his body. "And now you die," the man said with grim satisfaction. "You killed my wife."
He raised a hand and Dean yelled, twisting on himself as much as he could while pinned to the ground as he was. It was all too familiar, all too much like what Sam's big brother had already suffered again and again and again, at the hands of too many demons, too many monsters, evil creatures pinning him down and hurting him for their own sick pleasure.
"No!" Sam grunted through gritted teeth, and he launched himself out of the trees, knife first. He buried the demon-slaying knife in the man's neck and bore him to the ground.
"He was just a kid," Sam spat, staring into the demon's eyes, into Daniel Stoller's eyes, as he watched him die in smoke and fire. "He didn't kill your family. He didn't deserve any of this. He was just a kid and he didn't deserve any of it."
Stoller convulsed against him, once, twice, and was still.
At last it was gone, all of the fire and smoke. Even the flames in the mound had died. The Winchesters did nothing for a moment, panting in the dark. Then Sam took the knife out of Stoller's neck, wiped it in the dead grass, and moved over to his brother.
"You okay, man?"
He got Dean's hand in his, hauled him up to sit. Dean helped, not deadweight, not unconscious. Maybe, for once, he hadn't been torn up too bad by the telekinetic assault.
"Yeah," Dean said. He voice shook a little, but it was slight enough that they could both pretend it didn't. "Yeah, 'mokay. You stopped 'im before he did any damage. It just stung a little, but it's all right now."
Still, he put a fist to his chest, pressing without realizing he was doing it, and Sam left a hand on his shoulder. "That's good."
They were quiet for a while longer, just resting.
"You didn't deserve it," Sam said suddenly, the words bursting out of his mouth before he knew he was going to say them. He blinked, but didn't try to take it back.
"I know," Dean said with the faintest tinge of annoyance. "You told me. Dad told me. I get it, okay?"
"Really?"
Dean said nothing. Sam squeezed his shoulder a bit tighter, sparing a moment of silent apology for subjecting that poor body part to so much squeezing in one day. It was all Dean would take, though, so it was all Sam could give.
"While we were at the library," he said. "On the internet. I looked up Coach Peters. He disappeared in July 1990, sometime around the fourteenth or fifteenth. Never found, not even a trace."
Dean made a non-committal humming noise.
"Didn't Dad go on a hunting trip that weekend?" He was pretty sure he already knew the answer.
Dean huffed a sigh, but he nodded slowly. "Yeah, I think so. Second or third weekend in July, right? You probably remember more, what with your angel-fresh brain and all."
"Yeah." Sam sat still for a moment, then went on. "It's just as well. If that guy had still been around I woulda had to go on a weekend trip myself, and we've got the Apocalypse and stuff."
His brother laughed at that, short and painful, but real. "Guess it's a good thing Dad was a few steps ahead of you on that one, then."
"Sure." Sam scuffed a toe in the grass. He didn't say that he was disappointed, actually. He would have been just fine doing that little job himself, never mind their supposed responsibilities now, Lilith and the seals and the end of the world.
"Can we stop now?" Dean asked. "Are we done with this? Do we gotta hug?"
Sam looked up. "Will you let me?"
Dean let out an exasperated breath. "You're asking? When have you ever asked? Did Stoller turn me into a chick somehow in the two seconds he actually had a tiny bit of power, or is this just you being you? I mean, I always knew you were kind of a big girl, but..."
He shut up when Sam wrapped his arms around him and held on tight.
And yeah, Dean let him. For maybe ten seconds. Then it was done, or so he said. Loudly and repeatedly.
~*~
Back at the Klopfensteins', the kids were home from their singing. In fact, there seemed to be something like an after-party going on, a small group ranging in age from about fifteen to twenty-five sitting around the living room chatting and eating snacks, playing card games, drinking pop. The Winchesters paused long enough for Dean to snag a brownie, then hurried upstairs, aware that they needed to get rid of the scent of fire before anyone thought to ask what sort of bonfire they'd been attending.
They found Castiel sitting cross-legged on the air mattress in their room, his eyes closed and face serene. Meditating or something, it looked like. Sam rolled his eyes and went to shower while Dean decided to poke the angel.
Castiel opened his eyes and stared up at him. "Hello, Dean. You seem quite satisfied."
"Found the witch," Dean reported, sitting on the bed and taking off his boots. "Seal is safe."
"Well done." Castiel unfolded himself and went to stand next to the window, looking out on the dark landscape. He was humming something, Dean realized, and then he actually sang a few lines.
They are calling, gently calling, sweetly calling me to come. And I'm looking through the shadows for the blessed lights of home.
Castiel's singing voice was nice, but nothing extraordinary. Dean was vaguely disappointed at first, then remembered that angels' real voices had the unfortunate side-effect of making his ears bleed. "Stuck in your head, huh? That's a hell of an earworm."
"Mmm. I have developed a great appreciation for human hymns." Castiel looked back to Dean, tilting his head to the side. "You seem more settled, content. You and Sam talked?"
"Yeah." And that was all Dean intended to say on that subject.
Castiel just nodded and looked out the window.
Dean was starting to get a sneaking suspicion. "Hey, you know...this was kinda easy, for protecting a seal and all. You sure you really needed Sam and me for this job?"
"You needed to be here."
"That doesn't exactly answer my question, dude."
But it seemed that that was all that Castiel intended to say on the subject, too.
~*~
They drove around Woodlan one more time before leaving, better able to take in the memories now. Still a shadow tainted them, but it was lighter, gauzier. It felt like it might even pass someday.
"We'll come back sometime," Dean said, and Sam nodded. Castiel hummed in the backseat, soft and sweet and happy.
Woodlan was a beautiful town. It would be a shame to never return.
Epilogue: Oh, How I'll Feel Like a Beautiful Child Again
Sandusky, Ohio - September, 1990
Another town, another school. Dean leaned on the Impala for a moment, steeling himself, one hand rubbing absently at his chest while the other held his backpack. Just a moment, and then he would go inside. Just a moment.
Dad's hand fell lightly on his shoulder, and Dean looked up. He saw the firm line of his father's jaw, his eyes focused ahead, on the school, the way Dean's had been.
"You gonna be okay, dude?"
The question was soft, gentle. Dean wanted to be upset that Dad was still being so careful with him, as if he was made of glass, but the truth was that he wanted it. He still felt like he was made of glass, his insides squishy and aching from whatever the witch had done to him. It was still hard to get up in the morning, sometimes, though it was getting better.
"I'll be okay," he answered, just as softly. "I know what to do. Listen to the teachers, get along with the other kids. Keep my head down."
"No." Dad's hand tightened on his shoulder, swift and urgent, and Dean looked up, startled. Dad smiled down at him, a wry twist of the lips. "Keep your head up. Pay attention. Be safe."
Dean nodded solemnly. That was what he should have done in the last school. This year would be different. He would make sure of it.
"And talk to me, all right?" Dad's voice was deep and earnest, freezing Dean in place. "Talk to me. Whatever it is, whatever happens...you come to me. All right?"
A nod was not enough of an answer for this. "Yes, sir," Dean said very seriously, trying to make his dad believe just how gravely he was taking this instruction.
"Okay. Okay. Good." Dad paused for a second, then pulled Dean into a warm, strong hug. "Have a good day, kiddo."
Dean nodded, then closed his eyes and pressed his face into his father's leather jacket, just for moment. He breathed in deep, taking in the rich smell of leather and gun oil.
He carried the scent of it with him all through the school day, like a talisman to ward off the bad thoughts. And it worked. He even did all right in gym class.
The End
Prologue & Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 & Epilogue | Warnings & Notes
Soundtrack & Picspam
Art by millylicious