Fic: There Is Another Sky
Written for ephemerall 's prompt at ohsam 's fic meme challenge: AU (maybe pre-series). Sam and Dean grow up with a drunk father who likes to take his anger out on his kids. Dean gets out, Sam lies and tells him that Dad backed off. Dean comes home to find out Sam lied and John's abuse has gotten out of control.
Therefore, warnings for off-screen abuse of a minor, alcohol abuse, other triggery material. Although imho, it's pretty mild.
Oh, and just to be clear: I love John, I think he's a great character, and I believe that he wasn't a horrible father 100% of the time. Therefore, no John bashing, please!
There is Another Sky
There is another sky
Ever serene and fair
And there is another sunshine
Though it be darkness there
....
Here is a little forest
Whose leaf is ever green
Here is a brighter garden
Where not a frost has been
- Emily Dickinson
He drives into it expecting everything to appear different. Instead, as he drives past the welcome sign on the outskirts of town, he's surprised to find that everything is exactly the same. The houses may be more worn, the downtown a little more bare - some of the shop windows declare that they've closed for the season; others are just closed - and there's probably a couple of more farms stretching along the highway than there'd been four years ago, but other than that, nothing has changed a bit.
It's more than a little unsettling, he thinks, that a few years of college has changed him permanently, even if his absence in Lincolnville, KS, hasn't left a mark.
He turns his car off the main road, returning old man McGregor's wave as he passes him by on the corner. Dean doesn't think the old baker has recognized him; Lincolnville is just that kind of town. Dean remembers when he and Sam, when Dad was too passed out to care, had walked to McGregor's Bakery and the old man - old even then - had snuck them free extra cookies while his wife hadn't been looking.
At least for a few years. When Dean is ten, Mr McGregor's daughter succumbs to a lifelong battle with Leukemia, and the cookies stop coming.
Besides McGregor, too few others are on the streets for such a warm spring day. Small towns are like that - all the same. Cities too, but in a town it's far less obvious. On the outside, it's stereotypical Stepford, or as Dean's fond of thinking of it, a perfectly working heart. To the untrained eye it's a marvel. Inside, though, under the surface, beneath that lying, deceiving skin, the heart, the town, is sick. It's full of holes, little miss beats, that only those attached to it can feel. Things like cancer, that doesn't become headline news until a young girl is dead.
He turns out of downtown, and if he slows down a little bit then, well ... he's not gonna dwell too much on it. A town's dirty little secrets are open sores that fester, that feed like a parasite, infect, and he's about to willingly step back into another of them. The house is in plain view, and it looks exactly like Dean remembers it, too. A dog barks from next door's yard and he jumps, cursing at the yapping mutt, while he pulls up the drive.
Nobody runs out of the door to greet him, but then he doesn't expect them to; nobody knows he's coming. He is here for Sam, Sam and maybe for himself a bit as well, and he doesn't plan on staying any longer than he has to.
The gravel crunches beneath his boots as he climbs out of the car. Stumbling out of the garage and blinking into the brilliant midday light, John Winchester stops to stare at his oldest boy. A bottle of beer dangles between large, meaty fingers and Dean wonders idly how many he's already consumed today.
"So the prodigal son returns."
"Hey, Dad."
Without a word, John ambles slowly to the front door and Dean shuffles along behind him even as the familiar swell of self-righteous anger he always feels around his dad blossoms in his chest.
"You finally get kicked out of that prissy school you ran off to? Or'd you jus' miss me tha' much?"
"Where's Sam?"
A snort is all Dean gets in reply as John flings open the door. Inside, the house looks even worse than on the outside - garbage and junk litters the floor, the musty stink of smoke hangs, suffocating, in the air, and there's a dark spot beside the stairs on the floor that Dean decides he really doesn't want to discover the origin of.
"I see you've been keeping the place spotless, as usual." He hears the snark in his voice, but honestly can't find it in himself to care. "Dad, I just came to see Sam. Where is he?"
"Prob'ly out with those potheads n' whores he calls friends. How the hell should I know? Mind the salt!"
Dean lowers his foot from where it had been hovering over the threshold, right above the thin line of rock salt that John always keeps there. This time he's careful to step a few inches over the salt line. He and Sam had learned long again that doing anything else just wasn't worth the fight; he almost forgot.
"Beer?" asks John, rooting around in the fridge.
"Soda?"
He throws Dean the red can of Coca-cola before opening a new beer for himself. They sit down woodenly at the small kitchen table and Dean fumbles with the pop tab and he says, "I'm going to graduate soon. Major in Police Foundations. School's out for the summer and I though I'd spend some time with Sam."
John snorts again. In the background, Dean can hears the sounds of a baseball game playing on the TV in the living room.
He opens his mouth, tries to speak again, but stops. Four years is a long times to spend having nothing to say to the man who supposedly raised you only to try to hold a full blown conversation with him now; as he remembers it, even when Dean was still living here, they'd never had much to say.
His dad's eyes roam Dean's face before catching on something, darting down to where his neck sticks out of his tee shirt. His cloudy eyes clear in an instant, the beer temporarily forgotten. "Boy, where's your necklace!"
Dean glances briefly at his bare neck to where a small silver pendant had once hung and which, on the day he sped out of this down and out of this life, had flown out the window never to be seen or missed again. "You mean the demon-repelling star?" he scoffs. "Probably still under a dung heap in some farmer's field where I left it."
John flounders for a moment. "Why you ungrateful -"
He's saved from continuing by the creaking of the hinges on the front door. There's the soft scraping of shoes against the mat and Sam's voice calling, "Dean! Are you here? I saw your car outside!" A shaggy mop of hair peers around the doorway, eyes going comically wide at the sight of Dean and John both sitting down at the table. "Dean, you're here!"
"Hey, Sammy."
"What are you doing here? You never said anything when we talked on the phone." He frowns suddenly. "Is everything all right?"
"Of course it is. Had to see my dork of a brother eventually, didn't I?" he smiles, reaching up to ruffle Sam's hair. Sam ducks good-naturedly, but instead of the grin Dean's expecting to see, Sam looks uncomfortable instead.
"Your bed's where you left it, if you're staying a while," John interrupts before Dean can question the look. He stomps out of the kitchen and plops himself and his beer in front of the TV.
-
Sam watches Dean from the middle of his bed. Dean's is closest to the window but he's not in it; he's been working at the stubborn latch on the sill for nearly ten minutes. The line of rock salt along the glass is broken, but the last thing he's willing to do is to allow John Winchester's crazy delusions stop him now.
"Come on ... just a little farther ..."
He doesn't even hear his brother get up and stand behind him, he that intent on his work. It's barely even dark out, but Dean knows his father isn't waking up any time soon. He's fifteen and rebellious and Lacie Harris has promised him limited access to her newly developed upper half if he can meet her in the park at six.
He wiggles the knife to the left and a little to the right and with a click, the latch pops open. His foot is halfway out the window in the next second.
"What's so special 'bout Lacie Harris?" Sam asks behind him. "She's just a girl."
Dean looks disbelievingly over his shoulder and laughs, quietly. "You'll understand when you're older, Sammy." His mind is already drifting back to the most popular girl in class, her full kissable lips, the short cotton skirt, and her lovely ... womanly attributes.
"But -" Sam tries again. He's looking worriedly towards the closed bedroom door. "What if he wakes up?" he whispers.
"Don't wait up," Dean says, because Sam can take care of himself, and slips through the window, landing on the soft grass beneath. Above, he can hear Sam softly calling his name and something that sounds almost like, "Don't leave me," but Dean shrugs it off; keeps on going.
It's just the first time of many.
-
Sam watches Dean from his bed (military neat - it was the one place John insisted they always keep clean) as he moves around the room, unpacking what little he brought with him.
"So Sammy, how's school? You're graduating this years, that's cool."
"It's fine."
"No girlfriends?" Sam makes an exaggerated face and Dean smirks. "A boyfriend?"
"Dean!"
"What?" he asks innocently. "You know I wouldn't care if you did swing that way, Geekboy."
"Well, I don't!" Sam huffs.
Dean shrugs and then throws his now empty duffle into a corner. "Whatever you say. Now how 'bout we get outta here already; throw the ball around?"
They run outside, taking care to go quieter as they're passing the living room. Dean's dismayed to find that Sam's newest growth spurt leaves him at a major disadvantage even for a simple game of catch, but he doesn't really mind as long as Sam keeps smiling at him like this as they set up the boundaries and kick off. "How's it feel?" he teases at one point, after he's leapt in the air over and over and caught their old football perfectly every single time.
"At least I'm not the size of a moose," Dean shoots back. "Does it hurt when those antlers get stuck going through the door?"
Sam laughs and starts running towards the goal on Dean's side of the field. He has to pass Dean to reach it, and he almost succeeds, but then Dean lunges and tackles them both to the ground. It doesn't hurt and Dean's laughing too as he rolls off his brother, but when he glances down, Sam's eyes are screwed up and he's clutching at his shoulder in what looks like excruciating pain.
"Sam?"
"It's okay, Dean, it's my shoulder," Sam grimaces while Dean hovers above him. "I dislocated it a few weeks back, playing ... soccer. Jimmy at school popped it back in no problem. It's just sore."
"Let me see that," he says. He rolls up Sam's sleeve. The shoulder doesn't look like it's been dislodged again but there are also a frightening number of small, mottled bruises surrounding the skin around it. Sam's quick to pull away. "Man, why didn't you go to a doctor or something?"
"Dean, leave it! I told you I'm fine, I didn't need no doctor!"
"Fine my ass! Tell me the truth, Sam, now."
Sam's face sags. He picks up the football and walks back towards the house. "Dean, just leave it alone."
-
Dean leans over the bathroom sink as he washes his face in his hands. He's twelve years old but he feels at least a decade older. With one last swipe at his red, puffy face, he shuts the tap off and unlocks the bathroom door. Sam is waiting for him in the hall, looking at Dean like he's a piece of broken glass; it pisses him off.
"He did it again, didn't he?"
Dean pushes past him, entering the bedroom they share in long angry strides. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Sam's giving him the damn puppy eyes now and, dammit, but Dean hates him, always too smart for his own good. "Yes you do."
"You don't know what you're talking about, Sam, just leave it alone!" And he slams the door.
-
Dean admits that he's not the poster child for perfect brothers - or even for just okay brothers - but damn him if he's just going let Sam lie straight to his face. Dean freakin' wrote the book on Winchester lies; he can read one on Sam from a mile off.
He's been remembering things, ever since he came back. Little glimpses of time he had hoped to lose forever. Things hadn't always been this way; he can barely remember, but he can remember that.
He can also vividly remember what happened after things changed, and the thought makes him dig through Sam's shit more fiercely. Dean hits the jackpot behind a pile of textbooks on Sam's bed: it's a folder, full of medical records, and rifling through, not a one of them was signed by John.
The doctor's have their theories as well, right there in the red ink.
"Dean?"
Sam's standing in the door. The folder with Sam's treatment papers falls to the floor in a scatter.
"Sam. Tell me the truth. Now."
Sam talks and talks and when he finally stops, Dean is thankful because he honestly doesn't know how much more he can take. He is seething in his anger now, trembling with it, and it takes every last ounce of willpower he possesses not to take a large, sharp knife from the kitchen and slice it through John Winchester's face. He's not sure why he doesn't do it.
"Don't hurt him, Dean, okay?" Sammy looks so miserable, staring sideways at Dean. They're both sprawled on their backs over Sam's bed now and there's a lead weight on Dean's ribcage that refuses to lift. "He doesn't mean it ... really. He just -"
Dean's head is shaking back and forth. He chokes, "Don't ... Just. You told me he backed off!"
"I know I did, Dean, but just don't. Besides, I'll be leaving soon. I never told you: I got in, a full ride. To Standford."
"Does he know yet?" Sam's silence is an answer in itself.
-
"What's the truth? I need ... I just need you to tell me the truth."
Dean is four and half and silent. He's been Sam's self-appointed caretaker for almost a month now while his Daddy's been too sad, but he doesn't mind. Sammy is his responsibility.
Dean has been silent for almost a month now, too. They think it's because he's scared, or sad, about Mommy. And he is; it's not that. But he could talk if he wanted to. No, Dean is silent because you can hear so much more that way when adults talk about serious stuff, which they seem to do a lot lately.
The nice old lady Daddy's brought them to takes one of Daddy's hands, her voice like candy and sugar. She tells Daddy about the things in the dark, and Dean wants to say, of course they're real, one of them lives as the tree outside my window during the day, but he doesn't.
"What do I do?" Daddy says. He looks over at Dean and Sam. "I need to protect my family. Please. Just tell me how to protect them."
Daddy and the candy-voice lady talk for a long time. After, the three of them find another house, and for a while at least, the monsters stay away.
-
He wants to say, that's great, Sammy, I'm proud of you. Wants to say, Don't worry anymore. I'll protect you. I'll do what Dad couldn't do. But he doesn't say any of these things, knows that they wouldn't do much good - too little, too late.
Another thing about small towns: most people in them are itching to leave, whether they need to or not. Even fewer are able to. Dean can already feel the familiar sensation of too small walls closing down on him; that signature itch. But one of these days, he and Sam will get out, he thinks, travel across the entire country with nothing to hold them back. Sam would like that.
It looks like the sky is brightening already.