Book 3: Prologue & Chapter 1 (Coming Down on a Sunny Day)

Oct 11, 2013 19:31

Fandom: Supernatural
Title: Coming Down on a Sunny Day Book 3 (Prologue and Chapter 1)
Author: Maychorian
Characters: Winchester Ensemble
Category: Gen, AU, Family
Rating: T/PG13
Warning: ( skip) Language. Allusions to child abuse
Spoilers: S4, previous stories in 'verse.
Summary: John Winchester has four sons, but to an outside observer, he appears to have only three. Their mission is to stop the Apocalypse before it starts.
Word Count: ~6100 (this part)
 Author’s Note: Coming Down on a Sunny Day master list, and YouTube Playlist, from whence came the titles.

Coming Down on a Sunny Day
Book 3: The Children of Azazel

Prologue: Storm Is Raging

Castiel was trapped. He was surrounded by twisted white and gold, a typhoon of sensation wrapping him in coils of burning gold. And it burned, it burned like fire. It coiled like snakes, it tore like swords, a thousand swords, a million swords. All inescapable, indefatigable, because they were inside him. He was trapped inside his own mind, writhing and twisting against the bonds that held his being trapped in fiery hands.

He wanted to scream. Maybe he did scream somewhere beyond this, in the physical space where his body still existed, his vessel, Jimmy. Maybe Jimmy's mouth opened in a cry, a wrenching shriek of agony and terror. Castiel didn't know. He couldn't tell. He was unable to communicate with Jimmy for the first time in almost fourteen years, and that was the most terrifying of all.

Castiel's being convulsed in the conflagration that encased him, his mind thrashing with confusion and panic. He didn't know what this was, only that it was terrible and powerful and demonic. He was trapped and he was helpless, and he didn't know what was happening to his family.

Were they being attacked while he was held thus helpless, unable to do anything to protect them? Was John holding the Colt against a threat, was Dean loading a shotgun with salt while spitting obscenities with twisted lips and raging eyes, was Sammy reciting the Psalms, the Lord's Prayer, warding against the dark in the signs Castiel had taught him? Was Jimmy...was Jimmy able to stand at all?

Jimmy didn't fight. He wasn't the warrior the rest of them were, not in a physical sense. When danger came, except on rare occasions, he stepped back and let Castiel take control of their body. How was he handling it now, with Castiel somehow separated, segregated, torn from the familiarity of Jimmy's mind?

Castiel fought harder, and if he'd had a physical heart it would have been pounding with fear and concern. He had to get out, he had to escape, he had to return to Jimmy. But the molten gold prison tightened around him, burning, tearing, immolating, and he was powerless in its implacable grip.

Chapter 1: Talking Away

Two Months Earlier
San Diego, California
March 1997

Time to pull up stakes in another town. It was never Sammy's favorite day, but he understood the necessity, and he was looking forward to the next stop. Cas said the next guy was a special one. He wouldn't say why, of course-Cas never told Sammy why, just where and who-but Sammy trusted Cas. He was his big brother. The oldest of his three big brothers, if you wanted to put it that way, though most people wouldn't.

The Winchesters had been invited to have dinner over at Lily's place before they left, which was nice. Sammy let Jimmy and Dean pack the car while he made brownies in the kitchen, a box mix from the grocery, eggs and oil, the rich smell of chocolate, the punchy scent of gas from the old stove when he lit it. You were always supposed to take something with you when you were guest. One of Mom’s rules that they still followed.

The timer was broken, so he stood there by the oven with a watch in his hand, leaning down now and again to check. Dean would be heartbroken if the brownies burned. He'd had enough of what he called "Cas's cooking" when they were younger, before they learned to never let the oldest Winchester boy near any form of heat with any kind of food. Smoke invariably followed. Dad ruffled Sammy's hair on his way through the kitchen, an armful of binders trapped against his side, and Sammy looked up long enough to give him a grin.

He didn't burn the brownies.

"C'mon, kiddo, daylight's wasting!" Dean bellowed from outside. Sammy rolled his eyes, not pausing as he carefully cut the brownies into squares in the aluminum pan. He was using a pocketknife, the rest of their kitchen gear already packed up in the pickup truck Dad drove now, since he'd given Dean the Impala when he turned eighteen two months ago. Finally satisfied, Sammy lifted the pan by the edges, wincing a bit at the remaining heat, and hurried out to the driveway.

Dean leaned on the Impala's horn, waving out the window for Sammy to run. Castiel and Jimmy sat beside him in the Impala, as calm and serene as always, unblinking blue eyes watching Sammy come. Sammy stuck his tongue out at his brothers anyway and hopped into the front seat of the pickup to ride with his dad.

Dad laughed as Sam set the brownies down between them, then pulled his door shut. "Thanks for picking me, dude. I'd feel a little silly driving this big truck all by myself while all four of my sons took the other car."

"This huge truck makes everyone look silly, Dad."

Still, Sammy grinned, watching the Impala ahead as Dean led the way to Lily's house. He could see the backs of his brothers' heads, one sandy gold, one dark brown that was almost black. Dean was animated, talking and gesturing, fiddling with the radio, tapping his hands on the wheel, while Cas and Jimmy rarely moved, just nodding or listening. It was probably Cas in charge, then-Jimmy would fight over the radio and do his best to make Dean angry about something. That was one of Jimmy's favorite games, for a reason Sammy didn't understand yet. Maybe it was a big brother thing.

Dean drove more carefully than usual, not accelerating as hard, not braking as quickly. It was probably because of his passengers. Since Jimmy and Cas had wrecked Jimmy’s car last summer, both had been a little nervous about it happening again, though Cas was better at hiding it than Jimmy was. The other Winchesters had yet to get the full story on that crash and how it had happened-Jimmy and Castiel had taken off on a side-trip to Ohio on their own, and both had been unwilling to talk about what happened afterward.

Dean and Dad assumed embarrassment and humiliation to be the cause of their silence. From his oldest brothers’ sidelong glances and body language, Sammy suspected that something deeper was going on. He hadn’t pressed them for the story, though. Cas and Jimmy would talk when they were ready.

The lights were on at Lily's house, and the front door was open. Her two little brothers, seven and eight years old, were playing in the yard when the Winchesters arrived. The boys jumped to wave at them, leaving their toy cars in the grass. Sammy waved back before the truck even pulled to a stop along the curb. Thomas ran inside to tell the rest of the family that they'd arrived, while GJ stood there on the grass, waving happily.

The Winchesters got out of their cars. GJ grabbed Sammy by the hand to drag him inside, and he barely had  time to look around as the little boy hauled him bodily into the house. The first thing he saw inside was the huge dreamcatcher hung on the wall opposite the front door, dominating the entire entryway, string and beads and feathers, a complicated geometrical pattern bound in a hoop of leather and wood.

Sammy grinned at it. It was a new addition to the house he hadn't seen yet. Castiel was predictably unconvinced of the usefulness of symbols that weren't from his religion, and Jimmy took his side as usual, but Dean and Sammy were of the opinion that anything was worth a try. Anyway, the artisan Dad had found had been able to work a simple Devil's Trap into the pattern, similar to the one in the new red and gold rug on the entryway floor.

The light fixtures in the living room also held the points of a protective pentagon, and Castiel's carefully inscribed symbols decorated every corner and every window. Instead of being hidden and minimized as in almost every other building Castiel had tried to protect over the years, these were large, artistic, and displayed boldly as if intentional to the decoration. Lily's father, Gray, had renovated the entire house into an arcane enclave that would have made any of the Winchesters’ ancestors proud. Every art piece had a purpose, and every protection was built in and foundational to the design and the appearance of the whole.

Lily and her parents greeted the Winchesters inside the door, smiling and happy to see them. The house smelled amazing-pork chops and potatoes and green beans, GJ told them in an excited chatter. Candace, Lily's stepmother, took Sammy's pan of brownies with a gracious smile. Supper was almost ready and the Winchester boys were invited to sit at the table while she and Lily finished the last minute touches. Dean followed Candace into the kitchen, declaring his intention to taste test everything to make sure it was fit for his family to eat.

"I'm sorry you're passing on so soon," Gray said once they were settled, his hands folded above his plate almost in an attitude of prayer. "I feel like we still have so much to learn from you."

"We've taught you plenty, don't worry," Dad said. "That list of books Sammy gave you will help with any questions. And you can call us or Bobby or any of the hunters in that contact book if you need more."

"It's just, every time I remember that day..." Gray shuddered. "That cloud of black smoke coming out of my little boy, and your son, what he did..." He inclined his head toward Cas, who nodded back. "I can't help wondering, sometimes, what would have happened if you hadn't been here, if Jimmy hadn't happened to join Sammy to visit his little brother's new friend..."

"It was why we came," Castiel said with his customary gravity.

"Yes, so you said. I still find it hard to believe."

"Lily will be fine now," Sammy said. "She'll have to be prepared, just like I will, for the powers to manifest. But she'll be fine. She knows what to expect now."

"I can hear you talking about me!" Lily yelled from the kitchen, and the men in the dining room laughed, then turned the conversation to other things.

Dinner was delicious. Afterward, Lily pulled Sammy aside while Jimmy and Candace chatted and did the dishes, while Thomas and GJ embroiled Dean in a game of Go Fish, and Gray and Dad talked solemnly at the table about matters only mature men and fathers cared to discuss. Sammy and Lily wandered out to the back patio, the western sky now dim and red-streaked, the new spring too cool to be comfortable. They sat in plastic lawn chairs and contemplated the freshly tilled garden, the tall bushes around the patio rustling in the evening breeze.

"I'm still scared," Lily said.

"You'll be fine," Sammy said. There was no wavering in his voice, just as there had been no wavering when he said the same words to her father.

"It's still scary, though. All that stuff about how both of our mothers died, on fire on the ceiling. Why they died. A demon feeding us blood when we were infants. It's...it's scary."

"Yeah." Sam scuffed his toe on the artfully shaped flagstones underfoot. "Try not to think about it too much. We're trying to stop it. We're going to stop it. That's why...that's why my oldest brother traveled back in time to find us before everything got really awful."

They didn't usually tell outsiders about the existence of Castiel. It wasn't necessary. The whole "time-traveler from the future" part was difficult enough to grasp without bringing in the concept of angels. Jimmy and Cas's personalities blended together enough, at least to outside observers, that they could pass as the same person. They still came off as a weirdo, but no one had tried to hospitalize them for Multiple Personality Disorder.

"Right, yeah, that’s why." Lily laughed a touch hysterically.

Sammy smiled back wryly. Yep, the time-travel thing was enough craziness in itself.

"So now you're moving on.” Lily spoke the words slowly, as if feeling the shape of them in her mouth, testing their veracity, forcing herself to believe. “To the next person Azazel fed his blood to. So you can stop his plan before it starts, whatever it is."

Sammy nodded. Neutralizing the army of Azazel's blood-children had been the Winchesters' life for not quite two years. Prior to that had been mostly preparation for this quest, though Sammy had been too young to understand what his family was doing. He'd first learned about the existence of demons (and Castiel) when he was eight. It wasn't until he was twelve, deemed ready to join the family business by his father and older brothers, that they told him the rest of it.

He understood Lily's fear. He was still learning to deal with his own. It was terrible to know that he was supposed to have a role in the plans of such a powerful and evil creature as Azazel, a fallen angel, one of Lucifer's hand-picked leaders of Hell. It was disgusting and disturbing to know that his body, even his soul, had been tainted by the blood of a demon, changing his physiology and his spirit into something not quite human.

"What do you think your powers will be?" Lily asked. "Did Jimmy tell you?"

Sammy shrugged. "He doesn't want me to worry about it. He says he'll help me when they show up. I think the not knowing might be worse than knowing would be, though."

She nodded slowly, her long dark hair falling over her face, obscuring it even more than the twilight already had. She wore a lot of make up, Sammy had noticed, dark clothes, long fingerless gloves up to her elbows. He didn't begrudge her any measure of self-protection that she deemed necessary.

"Jimmy said he didn't even know what mine will be,” Lily said. “He didn't meet me in the future. I wonder if that means I was dead."

"Don't think like that," Sammy said, interrupting before the last word had finished leaving her mouth. "Negative thoughts, putting yourself down, stuff like that feeds the dark. You need to have as much mental discipline as possible."

"Right." Lily hesitated. "Jimmy told me to try meditating and memorizing religious texts, whichever kind I like. Is that what you do?"

"Uh huh." Sammy smiled softly. "Usually Jimmy helps me. I kinda like it."

His times of meditating and memorizing with Castiel (and sometimes Jimmy) were among the most peaceful of his current life. Dean and John always wanted to take him running, shooting, camping, or something else that would make him strong. When he wasn't training mentally or physically, he was working on making friends with the latest child of Azazel they had located. It was a lot of pressure, a lot of responsibility, but Sammy was dealing with it as gracefully as he could.

This was a lot of pressure for Lily, too. They fell silent, looking out on the yard in peaceful companionship. Sammy felt close to Lily in a way he couldn't feel with anyone else, neither his classmates who knew nothing of the supernatural, nor even his family, who, while striving against the dark as mightily as he, at least didn't have to fear the manifestation of darkness in their own bodies. Lily was his sister as much as Dean and Jimmy and Cas were his brothers. He'd felt the same with the other children of Azazel they'd already met.

"Can I tell you something, Sam?" Lily asked after a long silence. He took the question as confirmation that she felt the same way.

"Yeah, of course."

"I know I've had a lot of things going on lately, and most people would tell me that I'm probably just confused and I'm going through a phase or something. But I think...I think I like girls."

Sammy laughed. "That's cool."

"You don't think I'm confused or going through a phase, do you? I mean. My life has been kind of hectic these past couple of months."

He shrugged. "Don't worry about it. You'll figure it out."

Lily relaxed abruptly, leaning back in her lawn chair, thick-soled boots scraping on the flagstones. "Okay. Thanks, Sammy."

"No problem."

"Are you guys really gonna leave straight from this house and drive through the night to get to your next stop?"

Sammy sighed. "Yeah." He suspected he would be sleeping through most of it, but he still didn't like the night drives. He found it too disorienting to go from being in one place at night to finding himself in a brand new one in the morning, without being able to watch their surroundings in between to give himself a sense of transition.

"I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you, too."

He meant it. But he was also glad to know that Lily and her family were checked off the list, in a way. They were as safe as the Winchesters could make them.

Now it was time to protect another family who faced a terrible future unless Sammy and his family could save them.

X~*~X

Sammy was asleep in the back seat, sprawled out with one arm hanging over into the footwell, the other bent up against the backrest. Dean smirked at him in the rearview mirror, watching until he saw the unconscious twitch, the boneless shift when the car hit a bump, that told him Sammy was truly and deeply asleep. Dean turned his attention to the dark road ahead. They still had a long way to go, all the way to Colorado. The headlamps lit up the surrounding darkness in a cone of brightness like a lighthouse on a shore, the tires hummed on the asphalt, Dad led the way in his enormous truck, and Jimmy was keeping him company, slouched against the passenger door forcing his eyelids open every other minute.

"Is Cas asleep?" Dean asked.

He often wondered about what was going on inside that nerdy skull. It wasn't something either of his big brothers cared to discuss-what it was like to live in another person's head twenty-four hours a day for thirteen years. The Winchesters all lived in each other's pockets, constantly moving, constantly on the road, in and out of shabby motels and run-down apartments, taking with them only the few boxes they could carry in their cars. But Jimmy and Castiel definitely had the weirdest arrangement.

Jimmy shrugged, suppressing a yawn. "As close as he gets to it, yeah. He really likes riding with you in the Impala. It's the most relaxed and peaceful he ever feels. Like the world is almost right for him, for once."

"Yeah?" The idea was fascinating to Dean. He knew that he and Castiel must have been friends in the future Cas had come from. It was in the way the angel looked at him out of Jimmy's blue eyes when he thought no one noticed, soft and warm and affectionate. It was in the way he gave in to almost anything Dean wanted, and it was in the way his face lightened, the way he almost smiled, when he talked with Dean one on one.

Dean hoped his future self hadn't been too much of a dick to poor Cas. He was kind of a dick now, he knew, but he couldn't help it. He was eighteen, tough and strong and happy, with the best family and the best job in the universe. Being a dick came naturally.

Jimmy smiled. "Yeah." He leaned his head back on the headrest with a sigh, staring up at the ceiling.

If any time was a good time to ask, now was it. "Do you ever see...do you ever see anything about what's coming? Cas's memories of the future?"

Jimmy turned his head to look at Dean with narrowed eyes. "Not really. He shields them from me as much as he can. He doesn't want me to be traumatized by all the ugly bad stuff, probably. Same reason he doesn't want to tell Sammy yet that all this running around the country is about stopping the Apocalypse before it starts."

Dean frowned at the darkness in front of the Impala. Dad was far enough ahead that the truck was just a rectangular blob with two red brake lights standing out against the surrounding night. "Cas needs to get over that. We're old enough to handle everything he knows. At least you and me are. I'm still down with not telling Sammy about the Apocalypse until we absolutely have to."

Jimmy blew out a breath. "Yeah, I know. Sometimes he acts like I'm still the terrified, busted-up ten-year-old he met that first day. A lot of the time, though, I think if anyone's still traumatized, it's Castiel. That was...that was a rough waking up."

Dean was silent. He hoped Jimmy would say more. They'd never talked about that day, when Castiel woke after being unconscious for months. His grace had been torn and mangled by a demon during his travel through time, and he'd accidentally slammed into Jimmy as a kid instead of taking the older vessel along as he'd meant to. Then to wake up months later, and realize what had happened…

It must have been awful.

Apparently Jimmy had decided Dean was old enough to hear some of this now, or maybe he was too tired to care, because after a minute he kept going. "Yeah, that...that was a bad day. Mr. Baker beat me pretty bad that morning. Then he locked me in the closet without any food or water. I was in there for hours. Who knows how long. I was scared he'd just leave me in there for days, like he had one time on a weekend. It was summer vacation, so he could have. No need to clean me up and send me to school, no teachers to wonder about the bruises....

"It was raining. I could hear it outside, tapping on the windows. I was so thirsty my mouth felt like sand, and the closet was stuffy and hot, and I just wanted to go out in the rain and sit in the mud and let it run over me for as long as it took to cool down. It was all I wanted, seemed like it was all I could ever want, I wanted it so bad.”

Dean clenched the steering wheel with whitening knuckles and forced himself to be still and silent. He hadn't known that part. He'd known that Jimmy had had a bad foster family, one that abused him and messed with his head, but he'd never learned any of the details.

Part of him was glad Mr. Baker was already dead, killed by Castiel's boot knife six years ago. Part of him wished the bastard was still alive so he could go and do the deed himself. But he tightened his lips and drove his car, grinding his teeth as silently as possible so Jimmy wouldn't hear. He wanted the guy to keep talking.

Jimmy did. Now that he'd started telling the story, it seemed like he couldn't stop.

"Then something happened. I didn't know what it was. I thought maybe I was having a seizure, like this kid I knew in fourth grade, or an aneurysm or something. It started as a tickling in the back of my mind, this slow, curious pulse, like someone asking a question. Whatever it was, whoever it was, they were confused and sluggish, trying to figure out where they were and what was going on. Everything seemed wrong to them. They expected to be in a bigger body, to be strong and in control.

"Suddenly my head was all full of bright white sparks, and it spun and it burned and it lit up my brain with fire. All I could do was lay there on the floor and try to breathe. I'm sure you figured it out-it was Castiel. And yeah, he panicked. I felt his terror and pain, the wounds that had torn him up. Then the light of him, what was left of his grace, rushed all through my body from the ends of my hair to the tips of my toes. He figured out what had happened, what he'd done to me, and I felt his horror. I stopped thinking about how bad I hurt, because all I felt was sorry for this creature inside of me.

"And yeah. That was how it started."

Jimmy fell silent. Dean blinked and tried to breathe, tried to loosen his fingers and unknot them from around the steering wheel. He'd been sitting forward, practically on the edge of the seat hugging the wheel, and he forced himself to lean back and let the Impala embrace him again.

"He got you out of there." Dean meant the words to be light, just an easy little question, but his voice came out dark and insistent and heavy. He didn't want it to be a question. He wanted it to be fact.

"Yeah, he got me out of there." Jimmy slid his head sideways on the seat to look at Dean again. "Did everything he could to help me feel better, too. He couldn't heal me like he wanted to. Couldn't even leave my body so he could come back with a stronger vessel to rescue me, which was one of the first things he tried. He was stuck with me and I was stuck with him, but he still asked permission, and I said yes. He took over, shielded me from the rest of the pain and thirst, and he busted us out of that closet. Then he busted Mr. Baker a good one right in the nose."

Dean laughed, tight and high with a touch of hysteria. He kept it down, desperate not to wake Sammy. The kid didn't need to hear any of this. But, damn, that was hilarious. "He did, did he? God, I woulda paid good money to see that."

There was a smile in Jimmy's voice, too. "You were five years old at the time."

"Still. I wish there was video. That ugly bastard, thought he had a helpless kid locked up safe after he used him as a punching bag, and then that same kid breaks down the door and pops him in the nose. I hope that's not all Cas did to him."

"He didn't let me see. I think Dad might have a newspaper clip about the incident, though. Apparently Mr. Baker tried to press charges against the 'dangerous freak' who assaulted him."

"Even more hilarious." Dean shook his head, grinning at the darkness. "Next time Cas comes forward, remind me to shake his hand."

"Sure." Jimmy's voice was indulgent in the dark.

"And then you came and found us, huh?"

"Pretty much. I don't remember it well. Castiel used up all the strength he had finding your family and getting us to you. The next thing I knew I was standing in the rain beside this car, and I was the most exhausted I'd ever been in my life, so tired and cold that I could barely even feel how sore I was. Dad was pointing a gun at me, right through the rain, and his face told me that he would pull that trigger without hesitation."

Dean whistled, low and amazed. "Damn. Quite a welcome to the family."

"Yep. That's Winchesters for you."

"And now you are one. And we're traveling around the country teaching special kids how to control their powers so the Apocalypse will never happen."

"Yep."

They both laughed, low and warm and comfortable, surrounded by the rumble of the Impala keeping them safe.

They were both so relaxed, and Jimmy seemed so peaceful and open after sharing that story, that Dean dared to ask the question he really wanted to.

"What's it like? Having an angel in your head?"

Jimmy fell silent, staring ahead into the night. Dean drove, gripping the wheel firmly with both hands. The headlights of an oncoming car grew from pinpricks in the distance to widening discs, rushing toward them, until the light washed over them and vanished with a whooshing rush of air as the vehicles slid by each other at sixty miles an hour.

"It's...hard," Jimmy said at last. His voice was quiet, no longer as comfortable and warm as it had been.

"I said Castiel tries to shield the bad stuff from me, and that's true. But sometimes he slips. Sometimes he's too tired. Sometimes we get too close. We’re like oil and water in my tiny skull, usually, but sometimes we get shaken up, we mix together, and it's like falling into a lake while you're on fire. It's too hot, too cold, too bright. Too much.

"You wanted to know if I've seen anything of the future. The truth is yeah, I've seen a little. Just images, impressions. What I get the most clearly are Castiel's feelings, because they're the most human aspect of his experience. He doesn't see in the same spectrum as humans, you know that, right? Angels have far, far more senses than we do. Those images and impressions I get are… They’re beyond confusing. But his feelings, yeah, those I get. He learned them from you, mostly, a future Dean who's hard and scarred and broken on the edges, but still good. Still true and brave.

"Castiel doesn't dream, not the way humans do, but sometimes when he's tired, he slips. He goes away, or he takes himself away, back into this…this vast catalogue of memories he carries. Certain memories he returns to a lot, sometimes on purpose, sometimes without meaning to. Sometimes I see those, or at least get a sense of what they’re about.

"Right now, he's resting. I can feel the warmth of the memory he's buried himself in. It's companionship and comfort and contentment. It might be from heaven, with his brothers and sisters, or it might be from the future, riding around in the Impala with you and Sam in 2009. I don't know. But he's peaceful and he likes it, wherever he is.

"But one of the bad ones that comes back a lot, yeah, it's a nightmare. It's the end. Everything has gone bad. You're dead, and Sam is...possessed. The other angels are all dead, all pulled down to earth and torn to shreds by powerful demons and other forces. Castiel is alone, and he's terrified. He's almost out of his head with it. And then... He makes a choice. He jumps backward through time.

"And you know the rest. It goes wrong. He ends up inside me as a ten-year-old kid. A demon that rode back with him kills my parents. And here we are."

Dean released a breath he hadn't known he was holding and remembered to blink just as his eyes started to water. The lights of Dad's truck bounced as he ran over a rough patch in the road, and the bright wash of another car's headlights poured over them again, there and then gone.

He didn't know how to respond to Jimmy's story. It was awful and amazing and scary all at once. He wanted to know more, so much more, but it was obvious that Jimmy had a hard time expressing it. Mostly, Dean was glad he'd tried.

"Thanks, man," he said after a bit. "I know you don't talk about this much."

Jimmy shrugged, a movement Dean more felt than saw in the dimly lit car. "It's not something I've thought to try to explain. It's just...my life. My weird, crazy, screwed up life. It never seemed necessary to put it into words."

"Not even to Amelia?" Dean smirked when Jimmy shifted uncomfortably. It was still fun to tweak his big brother over his adorably awkward romance, even after all these years. "I know you tell her everything."

"Kinda hard when it's all over email," Jimmy mumbled. "I tell her everything that seems worth talking about. But the supernatural stuff worries her, and I don't like doing that. We keep it simple."

"You're not keeping her up to date on the war efforts, huh?"

"Not so much."

Dean nodded thoughtfully, tapping his fingers along the wheel. In a lot of ways Jimmy was a soldier, drafted to the frontlines, far away from his hometown and the girl he loved. Jimmy longed to return to her. And Amelia was waiting, Dean knew with supreme confidence. She would wait as long as she had to.

In the meantime, they sent letters. It had gotten a lot easier since the internet became a thing. Every town they landed in, Jimmy figured out where the nearest internet cafe was so he could go check his juno.com account as soon as possible. Maybe someday the Winchesters would be able to afford a computer and a dial-up service so he could do it more easily, but that was a dream for a more financially stable future.

As with any soldier in a war, Jimmy’s correspondence with Amelia kept him connected to civilian life. The letters and emails and occasional phone calls were touchstones he could collect and pore over again and again, dreaming of the day when he would be able to learn all of these things in person, when the war would be over and he could go home. It was no wonder that he didn’t care to discuss the details of the strange battles they fought, their desperate, secret war on the edges of society. Amelia was his lifeline, and she should remain untouched by the hardship and privation and doubt of a campaign that had already spanned more than a decade. It was a war Jimmy was fully committed to, but he didn’t want it to harm Amelia more than it already had.

A road sign flashed by. 221 miles to Colorado. After that it would be another five hours before they reached their destination in Colorado Springs. They were about halfway through the journey. Dean loved to drive, but the thought of nine more hours on the road made him force down a yawn. He and Jimmy might switch off later, though Dean’s fingers twitched around the steering wheel at the idea of someone else driving his baby.

And letting Cas drive didn’t even bear thinking about. There were some tasks that ancient angelic wisdom and experience didn’t translate to. Driving and cooking were two of them, and Dean was sure that if he hung out with Cas longer, he’d discover plenty more.

"So what's up with the next kid?" Dean asked. "Jake Talley in Colorado Springs, Colorado. What is it that makes him even more special than all the other special kids?"

Jimmy made a little humming noise. "I don't know. All I get from Castiel is some really intense feelings about the guy. Not really animosity, just...intensity. I think this kid has something to do with why the Apocalypse got set off. Gets set off. Did get set off, in the future we're not letting happen."

"Right." Dean nodded to himself. An even more important task to check off in a long, long lists of important tasks. "So we'll be even more awesome than usual when handling this one. Do you think there'll be a demon hanging around for us to exorcise so we can prove ourselves right away?"

"There has been one with each of the kids so far." Jimmy's voice didn't exude confidence, though. "Seven children of Azazel now, and each one of them had a close friend or relative possessed by a demon, watching over them. America at this point in history is supposed to be relatively free of demons, so it's been pretty bizarre, running across so many. But I guess if it makes sense for them to be anywhere, it would be guarding the future bringers of the end times."

"Just like there's an archangel watching over all the prophets, right?"

"I suppose."

Dad's lights were slowly getting smaller in the distance as the truck ran slightly faster than the Impala. Dean pressed his foot down on the gas, loving the way his baby revved up, g-forces pressing him ever so gently back into the upholstery. The dark landscape rushed by on either side, and in a few seconds they were keeping pace with John Winchester's truck again.

"Well, here's hoping everything goes as smoothly as it did with Lily," Dean said.

"Here's hoping," Jimmy echoed.

They sped on through night, following the road to Colorado and Jake Talley.

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yayayayayayayay, mine is an evil laugh, wuv, au, supernatural, fanfiction, rain falling down, took me long enough, john winchester, team free will, hurt/comfort, sam winchester, castiel, gen, dean winchester

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