SPN: we grew under a bad sun (Sam/Dean, PG-13)
we grew under a bad sun
Pairing: Sam/Dean (Wincest)
Warnings: incest, implied underage sex, character death (see summary)
Summary: John Winchester dies when Dean is thirteen: five lives the Winchester boys never had.
Word Count: 5,263
A/N: Thanks to sobrecogimiento for betaing! Loosely ordered from most plausible to least and liberties taken with just about everything. The Blue Lady mentioned in part 3 is from the article Myths Over Miami, which is a fascinating read if you have the time. Title from The Bravery's "Bad Sun." There's an additional warning for part 5, highlight after the "five" if you don't mind being spoilered (it's nothing triggery, I'll say that).
one
Something's wrong.
It's the first and only thought Bobby can manage.
He hears the Impala before he sees it, a low rumble making its way closer. He wasn't expecting John. He didn't get a call. That, in and of itself, is rare enough for him to worry, but when he sees the car, he knows. Something is wrong, so terribly, terribly wrong, because Dean is only thirteen and Sam is only nine and John Winchester is not the one in the driver's seat.
“Sam? Dean?” Bobby says, and Dean gets out of the car. There's something wrong with his eyes, something dead and cold and broken, and Sam comes to stand by his side, the two of them clasping hands like they haven't done in years, when Sam was tiny and still needed Dean's help to cross the street. They don't speak.
“Where's your daddy?” Bobby asks. Dean still doesn't answer, just motions with his head towards the backseat. Bobby thinks, maybe John's just passed out. Maybe he's injured. Maybe there's a good explanation for all this.
When he opens the door, he can smell it. John has been there long enough to smell. He's still, still as the grave, and there's a blanket on top of him, hiding him from sight. When Bobby draws it back he sees the long, deep gash across John's neck and clumsy, childlike stitches, and Bobby thinks he can feel his own heart break, because that is a wound that will never heal, and Dean tried to stitch it up, tried to make it better anyway.
“What happened?” he asks, and the boys will not answer. Sam clutches Dean's hand tighter.
*
The most he can get out of them, in the months that follow, is, no, they weren't on a hunt, something followed John back. Something was after him. And he wonders why they showed up on his doorstep, why they didn't call, why he isn't hearing from Jim Murphy, instead. He knows who Dean is supposed to contact. Dean just says, “He didn't pick up his phone, and there was a cop car. We got scared. Sam-Sammy helped me get him in the car.”
Bobby isn't quite sure he can deal with his heart breaking again, so many times in such a short space. These boys, these two boys, have lost so much. They've lost everything. And he, an old widower who's never been cut out to be a parent, doesn't have a clue how to do it, he's the one who has to put them back together again.
*
The years go by. He talks to the sheriff and tries to spin the story as best he can, but when she sees the boys, hears they drove two hundred miles with their dead father in the backseat, she's willing to fudge the truth a little and put John's death down, official and proper.
Bobby does the best he can with papers, gets them into school together. He makes sure that they are able to see each other as much as possible, and even that isn't quite enough. They hang onto each other tighter than he's ever seen. Back before they lost their daddy, Dean was starting to draw away from Sam a little bit. Sam would cling, and Dean would make faces, try to shove him off and complain that he wasn't a baby anymore, come on, Sammy, quit it.
But now, now they're locked together tighter than anyone Bobby has ever seen, like interlocking pieces, like a hundred invisible threads tied together. They're never going to let go of each other again, he knows. They sleep in the same bed, and maybe he should say something about that, as the years pass, when they're still sharing a bed at sixteen and twelve, because those are the things that boys grow out of. They have to learn how to be strong, have to learn how to get through the world alone, because someday, one of them might leave. Or maybe they won't, maybe they'll spend their lives no less than an arm's reach from each other, because this is how they know how to take on the world. This is the only way they will ever be strong again.
*
He does the best he can. He's no father, he knows that-he was never made for that sort of thing, it was never supposed to be his lot in life, but it is, now, and so, like he does with everything else, he adjusts the world until it fits. Sometimes Dean answers phones for him, plays secretary, and Bobby gives him extra cash so he can go out on the weekends if he wants. Sam learns Latin and spends hours poring over every book he can find. Maybe the boys should have normal hobbies. Maybe they should get out of the hunting life. Maybe it would be better for both of them if they could just-get over this, meet girls, get married, have normal jobs, and escape the specter of their father's dead face. But sometimes, it all comes down to blood. Sometimes, family isn't so easy to get rid of. And so he helps Sam with Latin, helps Dean fix cars in the front, watches as Dean cares for the Impala, the black car that is their inheritance, a lingering piece of their father in a world that has all but forgotten him. Someday, Bobby knows the two of them will leave and that car will carry them into the world, into blood and violence, sheltering them when nothing else will.
*
High school starts, and Sam starts studying harder. Dean starts skipping classes. Dean gets held back a year and Sam skips forward one, and it's right about then that Bobby catches on to what they're up to. He takes them aside one afternoon and tells them they're four years apart and there's no way in hell they're getting in the same grade, and they put on their best innocent faces, but he's well-trained in the art of detecting bullshit and doesn't buy it for a second. They're close enough already. No teacher deserves the kind of disaster that would come of them being in the same class.
*
When Dean is nineteen and Sam is fifteen, Bobby sees them kissing. Dean has mono-picked it up from some girl-and Bobby doesn't want to think about the fact that, most of the time when one of them gets sick, the other hangs a little too close until he's got it too because he doesn't want to face school without his brother.
So he sees Dean and Sam kissing, and maybe he should have expected that, because it's an easier way to pass on mono than sharing food like they always do. He wants to be sick and he wants to say something, but those boys have each other in their eyes, always have, and he may be the closest thing they have to a father now, but it doesn't mean he's part of their world. Their world is just the two of them, and maybe he's on the outside, maybe he's orbiting, but he's never gonna get close enough to break what they have. He'll say something. He will. Just as soon as he figures out how the hell he's gonna say it.
*
He tries not to see them. Sometimes it's not as easy as it should be. It's not that he wants to see-god, no-but sometimes he'll come around the corner and they'll be pressed up together, hip to hip, and they'll be laughing, so desperately happy, and their mouths will be on each other, and their hands will be in places he doesn't want to think about.
They never pick good hiding spots. He's going to have to explain to them, when they start hunting for real, that if they're gonna hide, if they're gonna spend their lives crouching in the darkness with guns in their hands, they sure as hell have to get better at hiding out. Still, that's a conversation he never, ever wants to have.
He turns away and has another beer and resolutely tries not to think.
*
The years go by, and they adjust. They make do, because it's all any of them have ever done. Sam takes well to being settled. Dean does too, but he's quieter, more subtle about it. It's just about the only thing he's subtle about.
Maybe it's harder for Dean, because in the years Bobby knew them before John died, Dean was always better about having to move, better about life in motion. Sam never was. He'd ask Sam about school and Sam would get this dull, flat, sad look in his eyes, like he didn't know why the hell he got stuck with a family that lived like this, like fate had dealt him an especially cruel hand.
These boys, they've been here for years now. Sam's eighteen, and Singer Salvage has been his home for half his life. He has friends. He has friends--never really had girlfriends, and Dean might've fooled around a little but he never really did either--good friends, close friends, friends he's held onto for years, and people know him at the local stores. People smile and say hi and, “Tell Bobby Singer hello for me.” Bobby's come up in the estimation of the town; he's less the town drunk and more a man single-handedly raising his two orphan 'nephews'. It's never been easy. He appreciates that people can see that, even if they don't see any other way he's helping the world.
*
Sam graduates from high school. Dean doesn't. Eventually, he just got tired of going, tired of trying to fail his way into Sam's grade, tired of the classmates who gave him sidelong glances because he was older than all of them and too close to his little brother.
Sam graduates from high school, and he and Dean go out after the ceremony. Bobby knows they've raided his liquor cabinet for all it's worth, but hey, Sam's a high school graduate, and he's not gonna begrudge him a little celebration. They take the Impala out for the first time in a long time. It feels like the beginning of the end.
The week after, they start packing. Packing up their guns, their clothes, the little knickknacks of a shared life in his spare room. He knows they're leaving. They're going out hunting, just like their father, just like he knew they would. He's happy for them, he supposes. They've got a right to go. Sam's eighteen, old enough to fight his own war now. He hugs them both, tells them to call, tells them that they better be careful out there. Tells them, “You boys ever need anything, you just let me know.”
And they do. They call sometimes, mostly looking for information, sometimes just to talk, and he's never minded either one. It's enough to know they're safe and alive and keeping busy.
Sometimes the boys call him up and all he can hear is road noise, laughter, and music, and maybe they're trying to have a conversation with him, but they're too busy elbowing each other and trading jokes and insults to say much, and he can barely get a word in himself. He doesn't feel quite as old on those days.
They'll probably always be too close. He doesn't really want to think about how close they've gotten, doesn't want to think about what they might do in the dark when he's not looking.
Still, they're his boys now, they're his responsibility, and he does the best he can.
two
Leah's not quite sure what to make of them.
She's one of the older kids in this foster home; she's seen a lot of things, and she's looking forward to the day she gets out, gets free of this life, tired of getting knocked from house to house like a pinball in a game nobody ever wins.
This new house is one of the better ones, but emptier than she's used to, so she's glad when the two boys come. Thirteen and nine and they still have the shell-shocked look of recent trauma. They're brothers, they tell her. That's about all they ever say, to her. They don't talk to anyone but each other. It's almost like they have a secret language, made up of hand gestures and eye movements and a knowledge of each other so strong that no words are ever necessary. Sometimes she wonders if maybe they're psychic, talking to each other with their minds, because they have a kind of connection she hasn't seen in other people.
Weeks pass, and in time, they tell her they lost their daddy, sudden and violent, and they lost their mama when they were just babies. She's heard the stories before. They're not the same as some of the other kids, the ones who got pulled out because their parents were abusive, or neglectful, or just didn't care enough.
They loved their family, when they had it.
They are each other's world and probably always will be. Their names are Dean and Sam, and when they say each other's names, it's like a soft, sweet prayer straight to Heaven. She wants to be friends with them, but there is no room in their lives for anyone else yet, the wound still too fresh. Maybe in time, they'll get better.
She doesn't want to tell them. She doesn't want to let them know, but she should. Chances are, they won't stay together, and that's why everyone here-the adults, the other kids-tries to make sure those two can see something that isn't each other. Sometimes, a lot of times, siblings don't get put together. They're sent on to new places, whether they can manage alone or not. Those two can't live without each other. She knows it. And if they're split up-and they might be-she's not sure they'll ever recover.
The older one is thirteen, and sometimes he seems violent, like he's prone to snap if someone so much as goes near his little brother. He's a little strange, talking about monsters and ghosts and things that don't exist, stories in the dark that for some reason, nobody ever told him weren't real. Chances are, no one will take him, with the way he is now. She knows that.
The younger one, Sam, is all soft brown hair and big puppy eyes, and someone will want to take that boy in and make those puppy dog eyes light up with happiness. Even though he's just as strange and broken as his brother, he's better at hiding it.
So she tells them, one day. She tells them she had a sister, Anna, only a couple years younger than her. Her sister was sent somewhere else and she hasn't seen her since, and the two of them aren't close like these boys are but it hurts all the same. Leah writes letters sometimes, gives her a call, but there is nothing face to face. And those two boys look at her, after, like she's just told them that tomorrow they will die, that tomorrow their world will end in blood and fire.
She's not too surprised when she hears they've run away. People run away often enough. They don't usually get far; they don't know how to hide from the world and in days, or weeks, they come back, dirty-faced and hungry. Dean and Sam are not ordinary children. She doesn't hear from them again. Maybe, they're in some other state, some other town, living a new life together. It's not like they know her well enough to give her a call, but all the same, she wonders.
*
One day, years later, she passes through Kansas. Lawrence is small and quiet, just a place to stop and refuel, but there's a psychic in town that her sister's been raving about for weeks. Her sister's into new age and psychics and crystals and a hundred other things that make her laugh and shake her head, and she figures, she'll walk by the house and see just how crazy Anna is for believing in any of it.
On that psychic's front lawn, there are two boys, kissing like they don't care who sees, like they don't care that they're in the small-town Midwest. They're kissing like they're the whole world to each other, like nobody else even matters, and they look familiar in a way she can't quite name. They look too familiar, but they can't be those boys. Those boys were brothers. And she's never met any other brothers that close, but-no. There's no way.
A woman comes out the front door, yelling for all she's worth. “You boys-on the front lawn! Get back inside! It's bad enough without showing off to the neighbors.” They separate but keep their hands joined and she's brandishing a wooden spoon at them; they dance around it, laughing. She shakes her head and follows them back inside.
Leah was picturing someone with a too-thin face, a bandanna, and a crystal ball, not a big black woman threatening teenagers with a spoon. There might be something to it, all the same.
She goes to visit her sister and she thinks of those boys, and she wonders.
three
Ed shouldn't be out here after dark.
There's something prowling the streets, leaving behind a trail of corpses and sickening, slippery flesh, and he may be a cop, but a gun and a badge might not be enough to stop the sick bastard from taking him out too. He's not even very good with the gun; rookie doesn't begin to cover it.
There are a whole group of homeless kids around here, basically squatting wherever they can find. Sometimes they steal food, but usually they just get it from the dumpsters and don't bother anyone, and honestly, he's willing to turn a blind eye. He should take them in, should get them sent to homes or something, but the shelters are full and most of them are runaways from the system to begin with. Some of them are old enough to be on their own. Most of them aren't.
He keeps an eye on them but leaves it at that. If he doesn't bother them, they mostly keep to one place and don't make too much trouble, and they're only dangerous if they're on the run. They live their lives, and he lives his, and he tries not to break a little when he realizes a couple of them can't be older than ten or eleven.
There are two new boys now. He's not sure when they got here, not sure how long they've been a part of the patchwork group. The older one is maybe fifteen, but the younger one can't be more than eleven, and he's tiny. He wants to send them to a place where they can have hot baths and hot meals and a roof over their heads, because they don't deserve this kind of life. Nobody does.
There's something prowling the streets, something killing people in the night in gruesome and bloody ways, and these kids, they aren't safe out here. These kids should never, ever have to deal with this.
Maybe it's that, maybe it's the knowledge that they are all targets, that makes him start to watch closer.
They all huddle together in the main room of the abandoned house, wrapped in blankets, and Ed hides just out of sight, quiet as he can be. The two new boys are playing teacher. They're sparring, in front of everybody else, fighting like they know how, like it's been trained into them, like it's in their bones. They explain moves and kicks and later, the older one brings a bag into the front room and opens it, taking out a long knife.
“Silver,” the boy tells them, with big eyes that have seen too much for his age, “these are silver. You see one of them, you've gotta go after them with this 'cause it's the only thing that will hurt him.”
Ed wonders if those gruesome murders might be the kids trying to protect themselves from people they see as a threat, but he's not sure. There might be more to it. He keeps watching, after that.
He understands what the boys are doing, to an extent. He's seen homeless kids form their own religions, their own mythologies, remembers reading about the Blue Lady, guardian to street kids in Miami, a beautiful angel that came from the ocean. Maybe this is like that.
The older boy talks about werewolves and shapeshifters and demons and ghosts like they're real things to guard against, and no one questions him. He gives out silver knives. He has shotguns. He has so many guns-Ed doesn't want to think about where the kid got so many guns. He has holy water, probably taken from the local church because the priest has a soft spot for these kids. He has salt, and that Ed doesn't understand. Maybe it's just another barrier in their mythologies, another thing to keep them safe in a world, in an environment where they're never going to be safe, not from anything, not from anyone.
The murders stop, after a while. He doesn't know quite what to make of it. He's heard rumors, that the coroner found something he doesn't know how to make heads or tails of, the body of a man whose skin slipped off like it wasn't quite made to fit on his bones. It makes him think of the monsters the boys talked about.
He doesn't believe in those things, but something in him knows that he needs to go talk to the boys, and then he will understand. It's dangerous to try. Those boys passed out weapons, and he's an adult, a police officer, someone that threatens the life those children have made for themselves. He should have brought them all in a long time ago, when he first found them, but knowing the lives they escaped from, he didn't have the heart. Someday, he'll be hardened enough to do it.
He's not scared of children-he'll never admit to that-but he is scared of the two new boys. They've got fire in their eyes and they are maybe sixteen and twelve now, but they have eyes like a man of twenty on the front line of a war. They're fighting their own war just to survive, but even so, he's never seen eyes like that on the face of a child before.
One night, he opens the door and just walks right in. He didn't bring backup. Rookie move, he thinks, right before he falls face-first on the floor. His head is going to hurt like a bitch when he comes to.
“We don't wanna hurt you, but--” a voice says, and his head swims. He blinks back into awareness, noting with a strange detachment that he's tied to a chair. The voice belongs to the older boy, and Ed shakes his head.
“No one else knows you're here,” he says, and the words feel thick and clumsy on his tongue. “I'm not here to bring you in. I just-there was this thing the coroner found, and--”
“Sammy took that one out,” the boy says, and there's pride in his old eyes. The younger boy is standing half-behind him, and he beams, showing his dimples.
“It wasn't a person,” the boy continues, with a certainty that chills Ed on some level. “That's why you're here.”
Ed doesn't know what to say. He nods instead.
And so they explain, telling him about the dark and every creeping, evil thing that lurks within it. In their minds, at least, it's all true: every horror story, every nightmare, every creature Ed has ever heard of and some he hasn't.
“Except Bigfoot,” the younger boy-Sammy--pipes up, and the older one shushes him.
They make him promise he'll never come after them, or the other children, and when he does, they untie him. They have to make sure everybody stays safe; they're a family.
The older boy says, “Winchesters take care of family, and family doesn't end with blood.”
He smiles, and for the first time, he looks his age.
four
There's something in the woods.
She's heard the rumors. Sometimes, deep in the Montana wilderness, people will go camping and they'll wake up in the dead of night, listening to scuffling outside their tent. It isn't bears, or wolves, or even raccoons. Food goes missing, but it disappears from locked cars and sealed coolers and there are never scratch marks. Clothes disappear. Sometimes, camping equipment does too, tarps or stoves or water purification tablets. No one is ever hurt, but people don't like to talk about it, all the same.
There's something in the woods, and has been for years. She's curious, never able to pass by an unsolved mystery without getting a good look for herself. Maybe it's not people; maybe it's spirits, or something like it. The stories are never clear, just whispers in the dark about two figures, somewhere between human and animal, hiding behind the trees and waiting for nightfall.
And so, she goes. She camps out alone, acknowledging it's stupid, because if there is something in those woods, maybe someone, she shouldn't face up to them alone. Still, she's got her gun, a good sturdy tent, and her boyfriend knows where to find her if she doesn't come back.
No one's camped there for a while. The man who runs the campground tells her where to go and gives her a sharp look, like he's heard the rumors too and doesn't know why the hell she's sticking around. She shrugs, laughs, tells him she's too curious for her own good, and he waves her on. She's probably not the first to say it.
There's a full moon that night and she waits, still and silent inside her sleeping bag with the camp light switched off. Her eyes are heavy but she isn't about to let them close, not yet, waiting for any sound that isn't the rustling of wind through the trees. Hours go by. And then, through the stillness, there is the sound of her cooler opening, the sound of footsteps moving fast through her camp. She holds perfectly still, waiting, and the sounds aren't right outside her door anymore, so she makes her way outside, quiet as she can be, whisper-soft on the ground. That was the one thing her grandpa taught her, how to move without making a sound, not even a rustle, and she thinks of him telling old stories at the reservation, wonders if he would know what to make of this.
She sees them, after a moment. Under the moon, the world is bright, sharp-edged, and clear as daylight. There are two shapes, two boys, and they can't be more than teenagers. She'd guess the younger one isn't more than fifteen or sixteen, but he's tall. They're both tall, tall and strong and so lean that their ratty, ill-fitting clothes hang off them. There's something in their eyes as they catch the light, like wolves, feral. Those two boys, whoever they are, whoever they were, are wild now, like they left humanity behind long ago, and the words that pass between them are not in any language she recognizes, maybe not even a real language at all. When they run, they make no sound.
They play in the moonlight like puppies, tussling in the dirt, and then they run towards the lake, laughing, stripping off their clothes as they go. She watches, and those two boys, who look so similar, who look like reflections of each other, pull each other close until no space is left between them. When they kiss, it is all sharp teeth and growls and breathless, joyful laughter, and the moon lights up their water-slick contours.
She leaves in the morning and doesn't come back.
five Warning for additional character death. You'll see.
This car is his baby.
It was a wreck when he first got it-totaled in an accident, the man selling it said, not worth the time but hey, it's your money-but it was a beauty, he could see that. Under the scratches and dents, he could see it shining full of promise, and he knew he could salvage it. It took him months; he rebuilt it from the ground up, spent days underneath it, covered in grease. He wondered who had this car before him, what kind of life it had, and the scattered pieces of the previous owner only make him wonder more.
There are toys tucked into the corners, Legos in the vents, a knife under one of the seats, silver with a carved handle covered in symbols he doesn't recognize. He supposes it doesn't matter, in the end. It's a nice car, and when he's got it fixed up he shows it off to everyone he can find, tells his friends, “That's my new car,” and they all stare. '67 Chevy Impala, rebuilt from the ground up, black and smooth and shiny and beautiful, and he feels as proud of it as if it were a child of his, like he's raised it, like its life started with him.
*
One night, he takes it for a drive along the long, winding back roads, enjoying the sound of the radio and the air rushing through the windows, the quiet sounds of night. There's a sound, a thudding deep within the car, and the engine coughs. The car rolls to a stop on the side of the road and he frowns. He thought he'd gotten it all fixed up, thought it was fine now, but maybe he was wrong about that. In a moment, he'll get out and pop the hood, see if he can get it going again.
The windows roll up, and he knows he didn't touch the crank. The locks click down, and he can't pull his keys out, and out of nowhere, he's scared. It's sudden, like being broadsided by a car at full speed-he's so scared, and he doesn't know why.
He hears a voice, and then another.
“This is my daddy's car,” one of the voices says, and it's childlike, small, brimming with so much fury that the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. There are two shapes in the backseat, wavering and indistinct, and he pushes himself against the door with all his strength, but it doesn't give.
“This is his car,” the other voice says. “You don't belong here. This is his.”
“Get out,” one says, and the other says, “No. He took it. He changed it. He made it his. He's not allowed.”
*
In the morning, the cops find the car at the side of the road. There's a man inside, or what's left of him. He's bloody, so bloody, and he's got a hand over his chest, clutching at himself. The front of his shirt is covered in blood, but no one can find any wounds on his skin.
On the dashboard, there's a green plastic army man facing him, gun pointed straight at his heart.
Pairing: Sam/Dean (Wincest)
Warnings: incest, implied underage sex, character death (see summary)
Summary: John Winchester dies when Dean is thirteen: five lives the Winchester boys never had.
Word Count: 5,263
A/N: Thanks to sobrecogimiento for betaing! Loosely ordered from most plausible to least and liberties taken with just about everything. The Blue Lady mentioned in part 3 is from the article Myths Over Miami, which is a fascinating read if you have the time. Title from The Bravery's "Bad Sun." There's an additional warning for part 5, highlight after the "five" if you don't mind being spoilered (it's nothing triggery, I'll say that).
one
Something's wrong.
It's the first and only thought Bobby can manage.
He hears the Impala before he sees it, a low rumble making its way closer. He wasn't expecting John. He didn't get a call. That, in and of itself, is rare enough for him to worry, but when he sees the car, he knows. Something is wrong, so terribly, terribly wrong, because Dean is only thirteen and Sam is only nine and John Winchester is not the one in the driver's seat.
“Sam? Dean?” Bobby says, and Dean gets out of the car. There's something wrong with his eyes, something dead and cold and broken, and Sam comes to stand by his side, the two of them clasping hands like they haven't done in years, when Sam was tiny and still needed Dean's help to cross the street. They don't speak.
“Where's your daddy?” Bobby asks. Dean still doesn't answer, just motions with his head towards the backseat. Bobby thinks, maybe John's just passed out. Maybe he's injured. Maybe there's a good explanation for all this.
When he opens the door, he can smell it. John has been there long enough to smell. He's still, still as the grave, and there's a blanket on top of him, hiding him from sight. When Bobby draws it back he sees the long, deep gash across John's neck and clumsy, childlike stitches, and Bobby thinks he can feel his own heart break, because that is a wound that will never heal, and Dean tried to stitch it up, tried to make it better anyway.
“What happened?” he asks, and the boys will not answer. Sam clutches Dean's hand tighter.
*
The most he can get out of them, in the months that follow, is, no, they weren't on a hunt, something followed John back. Something was after him. And he wonders why they showed up on his doorstep, why they didn't call, why he isn't hearing from Jim Murphy, instead. He knows who Dean is supposed to contact. Dean just says, “He didn't pick up his phone, and there was a cop car. We got scared. Sam-Sammy helped me get him in the car.”
Bobby isn't quite sure he can deal with his heart breaking again, so many times in such a short space. These boys, these two boys, have lost so much. They've lost everything. And he, an old widower who's never been cut out to be a parent, doesn't have a clue how to do it, he's the one who has to put them back together again.
*
The years go by. He talks to the sheriff and tries to spin the story as best he can, but when she sees the boys, hears they drove two hundred miles with their dead father in the backseat, she's willing to fudge the truth a little and put John's death down, official and proper.
Bobby does the best he can with papers, gets them into school together. He makes sure that they are able to see each other as much as possible, and even that isn't quite enough. They hang onto each other tighter than he's ever seen. Back before they lost their daddy, Dean was starting to draw away from Sam a little bit. Sam would cling, and Dean would make faces, try to shove him off and complain that he wasn't a baby anymore, come on, Sammy, quit it.
But now, now they're locked together tighter than anyone Bobby has ever seen, like interlocking pieces, like a hundred invisible threads tied together. They're never going to let go of each other again, he knows. They sleep in the same bed, and maybe he should say something about that, as the years pass, when they're still sharing a bed at sixteen and twelve, because those are the things that boys grow out of. They have to learn how to be strong, have to learn how to get through the world alone, because someday, one of them might leave. Or maybe they won't, maybe they'll spend their lives no less than an arm's reach from each other, because this is how they know how to take on the world. This is the only way they will ever be strong again.
*
He does the best he can. He's no father, he knows that-he was never made for that sort of thing, it was never supposed to be his lot in life, but it is, now, and so, like he does with everything else, he adjusts the world until it fits. Sometimes Dean answers phones for him, plays secretary, and Bobby gives him extra cash so he can go out on the weekends if he wants. Sam learns Latin and spends hours poring over every book he can find. Maybe the boys should have normal hobbies. Maybe they should get out of the hunting life. Maybe it would be better for both of them if they could just-get over this, meet girls, get married, have normal jobs, and escape the specter of their father's dead face. But sometimes, it all comes down to blood. Sometimes, family isn't so easy to get rid of. And so he helps Sam with Latin, helps Dean fix cars in the front, watches as Dean cares for the Impala, the black car that is their inheritance, a lingering piece of their father in a world that has all but forgotten him. Someday, Bobby knows the two of them will leave and that car will carry them into the world, into blood and violence, sheltering them when nothing else will.
*
High school starts, and Sam starts studying harder. Dean starts skipping classes. Dean gets held back a year and Sam skips forward one, and it's right about then that Bobby catches on to what they're up to. He takes them aside one afternoon and tells them they're four years apart and there's no way in hell they're getting in the same grade, and they put on their best innocent faces, but he's well-trained in the art of detecting bullshit and doesn't buy it for a second. They're close enough already. No teacher deserves the kind of disaster that would come of them being in the same class.
*
When Dean is nineteen and Sam is fifteen, Bobby sees them kissing. Dean has mono-picked it up from some girl-and Bobby doesn't want to think about the fact that, most of the time when one of them gets sick, the other hangs a little too close until he's got it too because he doesn't want to face school without his brother.
So he sees Dean and Sam kissing, and maybe he should have expected that, because it's an easier way to pass on mono than sharing food like they always do. He wants to be sick and he wants to say something, but those boys have each other in their eyes, always have, and he may be the closest thing they have to a father now, but it doesn't mean he's part of their world. Their world is just the two of them, and maybe he's on the outside, maybe he's orbiting, but he's never gonna get close enough to break what they have. He'll say something. He will. Just as soon as he figures out how the hell he's gonna say it.
*
He tries not to see them. Sometimes it's not as easy as it should be. It's not that he wants to see-god, no-but sometimes he'll come around the corner and they'll be pressed up together, hip to hip, and they'll be laughing, so desperately happy, and their mouths will be on each other, and their hands will be in places he doesn't want to think about.
They never pick good hiding spots. He's going to have to explain to them, when they start hunting for real, that if they're gonna hide, if they're gonna spend their lives crouching in the darkness with guns in their hands, they sure as hell have to get better at hiding out. Still, that's a conversation he never, ever wants to have.
He turns away and has another beer and resolutely tries not to think.
*
The years go by, and they adjust. They make do, because it's all any of them have ever done. Sam takes well to being settled. Dean does too, but he's quieter, more subtle about it. It's just about the only thing he's subtle about.
Maybe it's harder for Dean, because in the years Bobby knew them before John died, Dean was always better about having to move, better about life in motion. Sam never was. He'd ask Sam about school and Sam would get this dull, flat, sad look in his eyes, like he didn't know why the hell he got stuck with a family that lived like this, like fate had dealt him an especially cruel hand.
These boys, they've been here for years now. Sam's eighteen, and Singer Salvage has been his home for half his life. He has friends. He has friends--never really had girlfriends, and Dean might've fooled around a little but he never really did either--good friends, close friends, friends he's held onto for years, and people know him at the local stores. People smile and say hi and, “Tell Bobby Singer hello for me.” Bobby's come up in the estimation of the town; he's less the town drunk and more a man single-handedly raising his two orphan 'nephews'. It's never been easy. He appreciates that people can see that, even if they don't see any other way he's helping the world.
*
Sam graduates from high school. Dean doesn't. Eventually, he just got tired of going, tired of trying to fail his way into Sam's grade, tired of the classmates who gave him sidelong glances because he was older than all of them and too close to his little brother.
Sam graduates from high school, and he and Dean go out after the ceremony. Bobby knows they've raided his liquor cabinet for all it's worth, but hey, Sam's a high school graduate, and he's not gonna begrudge him a little celebration. They take the Impala out for the first time in a long time. It feels like the beginning of the end.
The week after, they start packing. Packing up their guns, their clothes, the little knickknacks of a shared life in his spare room. He knows they're leaving. They're going out hunting, just like their father, just like he knew they would. He's happy for them, he supposes. They've got a right to go. Sam's eighteen, old enough to fight his own war now. He hugs them both, tells them to call, tells them that they better be careful out there. Tells them, “You boys ever need anything, you just let me know.”
And they do. They call sometimes, mostly looking for information, sometimes just to talk, and he's never minded either one. It's enough to know they're safe and alive and keeping busy.
Sometimes the boys call him up and all he can hear is road noise, laughter, and music, and maybe they're trying to have a conversation with him, but they're too busy elbowing each other and trading jokes and insults to say much, and he can barely get a word in himself. He doesn't feel quite as old on those days.
They'll probably always be too close. He doesn't really want to think about how close they've gotten, doesn't want to think about what they might do in the dark when he's not looking.
Still, they're his boys now, they're his responsibility, and he does the best he can.
two
Leah's not quite sure what to make of them.
She's one of the older kids in this foster home; she's seen a lot of things, and she's looking forward to the day she gets out, gets free of this life, tired of getting knocked from house to house like a pinball in a game nobody ever wins.
This new house is one of the better ones, but emptier than she's used to, so she's glad when the two boys come. Thirteen and nine and they still have the shell-shocked look of recent trauma. They're brothers, they tell her. That's about all they ever say, to her. They don't talk to anyone but each other. It's almost like they have a secret language, made up of hand gestures and eye movements and a knowledge of each other so strong that no words are ever necessary. Sometimes she wonders if maybe they're psychic, talking to each other with their minds, because they have a kind of connection she hasn't seen in other people.
Weeks pass, and in time, they tell her they lost their daddy, sudden and violent, and they lost their mama when they were just babies. She's heard the stories before. They're not the same as some of the other kids, the ones who got pulled out because their parents were abusive, or neglectful, or just didn't care enough.
They loved their family, when they had it.
They are each other's world and probably always will be. Their names are Dean and Sam, and when they say each other's names, it's like a soft, sweet prayer straight to Heaven. She wants to be friends with them, but there is no room in their lives for anyone else yet, the wound still too fresh. Maybe in time, they'll get better.
She doesn't want to tell them. She doesn't want to let them know, but she should. Chances are, they won't stay together, and that's why everyone here-the adults, the other kids-tries to make sure those two can see something that isn't each other. Sometimes, a lot of times, siblings don't get put together. They're sent on to new places, whether they can manage alone or not. Those two can't live without each other. She knows it. And if they're split up-and they might be-she's not sure they'll ever recover.
The older one is thirteen, and sometimes he seems violent, like he's prone to snap if someone so much as goes near his little brother. He's a little strange, talking about monsters and ghosts and things that don't exist, stories in the dark that for some reason, nobody ever told him weren't real. Chances are, no one will take him, with the way he is now. She knows that.
The younger one, Sam, is all soft brown hair and big puppy eyes, and someone will want to take that boy in and make those puppy dog eyes light up with happiness. Even though he's just as strange and broken as his brother, he's better at hiding it.
So she tells them, one day. She tells them she had a sister, Anna, only a couple years younger than her. Her sister was sent somewhere else and she hasn't seen her since, and the two of them aren't close like these boys are but it hurts all the same. Leah writes letters sometimes, gives her a call, but there is nothing face to face. And those two boys look at her, after, like she's just told them that tomorrow they will die, that tomorrow their world will end in blood and fire.
She's not too surprised when she hears they've run away. People run away often enough. They don't usually get far; they don't know how to hide from the world and in days, or weeks, they come back, dirty-faced and hungry. Dean and Sam are not ordinary children. She doesn't hear from them again. Maybe, they're in some other state, some other town, living a new life together. It's not like they know her well enough to give her a call, but all the same, she wonders.
*
One day, years later, she passes through Kansas. Lawrence is small and quiet, just a place to stop and refuel, but there's a psychic in town that her sister's been raving about for weeks. Her sister's into new age and psychics and crystals and a hundred other things that make her laugh and shake her head, and she figures, she'll walk by the house and see just how crazy Anna is for believing in any of it.
On that psychic's front lawn, there are two boys, kissing like they don't care who sees, like they don't care that they're in the small-town Midwest. They're kissing like they're the whole world to each other, like nobody else even matters, and they look familiar in a way she can't quite name. They look too familiar, but they can't be those boys. Those boys were brothers. And she's never met any other brothers that close, but-no. There's no way.
A woman comes out the front door, yelling for all she's worth. “You boys-on the front lawn! Get back inside! It's bad enough without showing off to the neighbors.” They separate but keep their hands joined and she's brandishing a wooden spoon at them; they dance around it, laughing. She shakes her head and follows them back inside.
Leah was picturing someone with a too-thin face, a bandanna, and a crystal ball, not a big black woman threatening teenagers with a spoon. There might be something to it, all the same.
She goes to visit her sister and she thinks of those boys, and she wonders.
three
Ed shouldn't be out here after dark.
There's something prowling the streets, leaving behind a trail of corpses and sickening, slippery flesh, and he may be a cop, but a gun and a badge might not be enough to stop the sick bastard from taking him out too. He's not even very good with the gun; rookie doesn't begin to cover it.
There are a whole group of homeless kids around here, basically squatting wherever they can find. Sometimes they steal food, but usually they just get it from the dumpsters and don't bother anyone, and honestly, he's willing to turn a blind eye. He should take them in, should get them sent to homes or something, but the shelters are full and most of them are runaways from the system to begin with. Some of them are old enough to be on their own. Most of them aren't.
He keeps an eye on them but leaves it at that. If he doesn't bother them, they mostly keep to one place and don't make too much trouble, and they're only dangerous if they're on the run. They live their lives, and he lives his, and he tries not to break a little when he realizes a couple of them can't be older than ten or eleven.
There are two new boys now. He's not sure when they got here, not sure how long they've been a part of the patchwork group. The older one is maybe fifteen, but the younger one can't be more than eleven, and he's tiny. He wants to send them to a place where they can have hot baths and hot meals and a roof over their heads, because they don't deserve this kind of life. Nobody does.
There's something prowling the streets, something killing people in the night in gruesome and bloody ways, and these kids, they aren't safe out here. These kids should never, ever have to deal with this.
Maybe it's that, maybe it's the knowledge that they are all targets, that makes him start to watch closer.
They all huddle together in the main room of the abandoned house, wrapped in blankets, and Ed hides just out of sight, quiet as he can be. The two new boys are playing teacher. They're sparring, in front of everybody else, fighting like they know how, like it's been trained into them, like it's in their bones. They explain moves and kicks and later, the older one brings a bag into the front room and opens it, taking out a long knife.
“Silver,” the boy tells them, with big eyes that have seen too much for his age, “these are silver. You see one of them, you've gotta go after them with this 'cause it's the only thing that will hurt him.”
Ed wonders if those gruesome murders might be the kids trying to protect themselves from people they see as a threat, but he's not sure. There might be more to it. He keeps watching, after that.
He understands what the boys are doing, to an extent. He's seen homeless kids form their own religions, their own mythologies, remembers reading about the Blue Lady, guardian to street kids in Miami, a beautiful angel that came from the ocean. Maybe this is like that.
The older boy talks about werewolves and shapeshifters and demons and ghosts like they're real things to guard against, and no one questions him. He gives out silver knives. He has shotguns. He has so many guns-Ed doesn't want to think about where the kid got so many guns. He has holy water, probably taken from the local church because the priest has a soft spot for these kids. He has salt, and that Ed doesn't understand. Maybe it's just another barrier in their mythologies, another thing to keep them safe in a world, in an environment where they're never going to be safe, not from anything, not from anyone.
The murders stop, after a while. He doesn't know quite what to make of it. He's heard rumors, that the coroner found something he doesn't know how to make heads or tails of, the body of a man whose skin slipped off like it wasn't quite made to fit on his bones. It makes him think of the monsters the boys talked about.
He doesn't believe in those things, but something in him knows that he needs to go talk to the boys, and then he will understand. It's dangerous to try. Those boys passed out weapons, and he's an adult, a police officer, someone that threatens the life those children have made for themselves. He should have brought them all in a long time ago, when he first found them, but knowing the lives they escaped from, he didn't have the heart. Someday, he'll be hardened enough to do it.
He's not scared of children-he'll never admit to that-but he is scared of the two new boys. They've got fire in their eyes and they are maybe sixteen and twelve now, but they have eyes like a man of twenty on the front line of a war. They're fighting their own war just to survive, but even so, he's never seen eyes like that on the face of a child before.
One night, he opens the door and just walks right in. He didn't bring backup. Rookie move, he thinks, right before he falls face-first on the floor. His head is going to hurt like a bitch when he comes to.
“We don't wanna hurt you, but--” a voice says, and his head swims. He blinks back into awareness, noting with a strange detachment that he's tied to a chair. The voice belongs to the older boy, and Ed shakes his head.
“No one else knows you're here,” he says, and the words feel thick and clumsy on his tongue. “I'm not here to bring you in. I just-there was this thing the coroner found, and--”
“Sammy took that one out,” the boy says, and there's pride in his old eyes. The younger boy is standing half-behind him, and he beams, showing his dimples.
“It wasn't a person,” the boy continues, with a certainty that chills Ed on some level. “That's why you're here.”
Ed doesn't know what to say. He nods instead.
And so they explain, telling him about the dark and every creeping, evil thing that lurks within it. In their minds, at least, it's all true: every horror story, every nightmare, every creature Ed has ever heard of and some he hasn't.
“Except Bigfoot,” the younger boy-Sammy--pipes up, and the older one shushes him.
They make him promise he'll never come after them, or the other children, and when he does, they untie him. They have to make sure everybody stays safe; they're a family.
The older boy says, “Winchesters take care of family, and family doesn't end with blood.”
He smiles, and for the first time, he looks his age.
four
There's something in the woods.
She's heard the rumors. Sometimes, deep in the Montana wilderness, people will go camping and they'll wake up in the dead of night, listening to scuffling outside their tent. It isn't bears, or wolves, or even raccoons. Food goes missing, but it disappears from locked cars and sealed coolers and there are never scratch marks. Clothes disappear. Sometimes, camping equipment does too, tarps or stoves or water purification tablets. No one is ever hurt, but people don't like to talk about it, all the same.
There's something in the woods, and has been for years. She's curious, never able to pass by an unsolved mystery without getting a good look for herself. Maybe it's not people; maybe it's spirits, or something like it. The stories are never clear, just whispers in the dark about two figures, somewhere between human and animal, hiding behind the trees and waiting for nightfall.
And so, she goes. She camps out alone, acknowledging it's stupid, because if there is something in those woods, maybe someone, she shouldn't face up to them alone. Still, she's got her gun, a good sturdy tent, and her boyfriend knows where to find her if she doesn't come back.
No one's camped there for a while. The man who runs the campground tells her where to go and gives her a sharp look, like he's heard the rumors too and doesn't know why the hell she's sticking around. She shrugs, laughs, tells him she's too curious for her own good, and he waves her on. She's probably not the first to say it.
There's a full moon that night and she waits, still and silent inside her sleeping bag with the camp light switched off. Her eyes are heavy but she isn't about to let them close, not yet, waiting for any sound that isn't the rustling of wind through the trees. Hours go by. And then, through the stillness, there is the sound of her cooler opening, the sound of footsteps moving fast through her camp. She holds perfectly still, waiting, and the sounds aren't right outside her door anymore, so she makes her way outside, quiet as she can be, whisper-soft on the ground. That was the one thing her grandpa taught her, how to move without making a sound, not even a rustle, and she thinks of him telling old stories at the reservation, wonders if he would know what to make of this.
She sees them, after a moment. Under the moon, the world is bright, sharp-edged, and clear as daylight. There are two shapes, two boys, and they can't be more than teenagers. She'd guess the younger one isn't more than fifteen or sixteen, but he's tall. They're both tall, tall and strong and so lean that their ratty, ill-fitting clothes hang off them. There's something in their eyes as they catch the light, like wolves, feral. Those two boys, whoever they are, whoever they were, are wild now, like they left humanity behind long ago, and the words that pass between them are not in any language she recognizes, maybe not even a real language at all. When they run, they make no sound.
They play in the moonlight like puppies, tussling in the dirt, and then they run towards the lake, laughing, stripping off their clothes as they go. She watches, and those two boys, who look so similar, who look like reflections of each other, pull each other close until no space is left between them. When they kiss, it is all sharp teeth and growls and breathless, joyful laughter, and the moon lights up their water-slick contours.
She leaves in the morning and doesn't come back.
five Warning for additional character death. You'll see.
This car is his baby.
It was a wreck when he first got it-totaled in an accident, the man selling it said, not worth the time but hey, it's your money-but it was a beauty, he could see that. Under the scratches and dents, he could see it shining full of promise, and he knew he could salvage it. It took him months; he rebuilt it from the ground up, spent days underneath it, covered in grease. He wondered who had this car before him, what kind of life it had, and the scattered pieces of the previous owner only make him wonder more.
There are toys tucked into the corners, Legos in the vents, a knife under one of the seats, silver with a carved handle covered in symbols he doesn't recognize. He supposes it doesn't matter, in the end. It's a nice car, and when he's got it fixed up he shows it off to everyone he can find, tells his friends, “That's my new car,” and they all stare. '67 Chevy Impala, rebuilt from the ground up, black and smooth and shiny and beautiful, and he feels as proud of it as if it were a child of his, like he's raised it, like its life started with him.
*
One night, he takes it for a drive along the long, winding back roads, enjoying the sound of the radio and the air rushing through the windows, the quiet sounds of night. There's a sound, a thudding deep within the car, and the engine coughs. The car rolls to a stop on the side of the road and he frowns. He thought he'd gotten it all fixed up, thought it was fine now, but maybe he was wrong about that. In a moment, he'll get out and pop the hood, see if he can get it going again.
The windows roll up, and he knows he didn't touch the crank. The locks click down, and he can't pull his keys out, and out of nowhere, he's scared. It's sudden, like being broadsided by a car at full speed-he's so scared, and he doesn't know why.
He hears a voice, and then another.
“This is my daddy's car,” one of the voices says, and it's childlike, small, brimming with so much fury that the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. There are two shapes in the backseat, wavering and indistinct, and he pushes himself against the door with all his strength, but it doesn't give.
“This is his car,” the other voice says. “You don't belong here. This is his.”
“Get out,” one says, and the other says, “No. He took it. He changed it. He made it his. He's not allowed.”
*
In the morning, the cops find the car at the side of the road. There's a man inside, or what's left of him. He's bloody, so bloody, and he's got a hand over his chest, clutching at himself. The front of his shirt is covered in blood, but no one can find any wounds on his skin.
On the dashboard, there's a green plastic army man facing him, gun pointed straight at his heart.