We Start and End with Family - Chapter 11
Title: We Start and End with Family
Summary: Two years after losing his brother, Dean has settled down and started a new family, but he’s never forgotten the family he left behind and his past has not forgotten him.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, ritual abuse and nudity with children present, but not involved. Distorted uses of biblical quotes/Christian doctrine/ceremony.
Spoilers: Through early Season 6
Word Count: 3,380 for this chapter
Author’s Note: Diverges from canon about two minutes before the end of ‘Swan Song’ (no Sam spying on Dean and Lisa).
Written for spn_reversebang. The beautiful art featured along with this story was illustrated by puguita, whose art prompt and bountiful creativity inspired the story. All her illustrations can be found together at the art master post.
A million worlds of thanks to the truly awesome agent_jl36 and ebony_quill for their scene edits and the tremendously kind durtydeefla82 for taking the time to do a read through and edits for the whole shebang on extremely short notice.
The story master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 10
After a dressing room layover on some deserted island that Castiel had deemed private, the angel dropped them back at Bobby’s. Dean’s brow creased as he took in the trashed living room. While there were no bodies, all the other signs of a fight were still there from the out of place furniture to the scattered papers that littered the floor. The unsettled feeling in Dean’s gut reared back up at the proof that the bastards had made it this far.
Dean forced a smirk when he turned to see Bobby staring at them. “Hey, Bobby. I see you got the number for my interior decorator.”
In a few quick strides Bobby closed in on Dean. After giving Dean a quick look over Bobby pulled him into his arms. In that instant it hit Dean that he really was still here. There was still a chance to make this work. Tightly he gripped Bobby back until the older man pulled away.
A flash of anger flared over Bobby’s eyes. With a growl Bobby gripped the front of Dean’s shirt. “You ever pull a stunt like that again...”
“What?” Dean gave a dismissive glance to Bobby’s fist. “You’ll kill me?”
Slowly Bobby’s fingers released Dean’s t-shirt. “I oughta just on principal.”
“Get in line. We’re back to taking numbers on that.”
Bobby shook his head and patted his hand over Dean’s chest. “Boy, when you gonna learn that you’re more than a body to be sacrificed?”
There wasn’t anything Dean could say that Bobby would want to hear. It wasn’t as if he got off on playing the sacrificial lamb, but he wasn’t ever going to play it safe when his family was on the line. Avoiding it entirely, Dean looked back to Castiel.
“Thanks for popping down to save my ass...again.” Castiel’s face was lined with dissatisfaction. While Dean didn’t expect the angel to be jumping for joy, he’d expected something a little less grim. “Cas, for the record, that’s a good thing.”
“Agreed. I only apologize it wasn’t soon enough to spare your suffering.”
Dean rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably and waved Castiel off. “No problem. I always say any death you can walk away from is a good one. Right, Sammy?”
His brother pulled his eyes up from the floor, his expression looking even gloomier than the damn pouting angel. “Yeah. Sure, Dean.”
“Is anyone glad I’m alive?” While it was mostly a joke, he wasn’t too sure with all the long faces. “Where the hell is everyone anyway?”
“They’re upstairs.” Bobby looked between Castiel and Sam before narrowing his eyes on Dean. “Just how bad did it get?”
Dean shrugged. “It’s better now.”
Even his face fell when he really thought about the people they’d left behind. Sam had told him that he’d smoked Father Reed, but there were a lot of confused kids there with parents that had been counting on today being the apocalypse.
“Except, now we got a bunch of half crazed fanatics a whacko short of a Jonestown.”
“I will attend to the congregation and the text,” Castiel said and apparently the angel meant right now because in the next instant he was gone.
“Yeah, okay, but no smiting the kids!” Dean called after him.
The pounding of footsteps upstairs immediately followed Dean’s shout. “Dad!”
Ben flew around the corner and down the steps so fast he skidded at the bottom. Dean grunted as his son practically plowed him over before throwing his arms around him.
“Ben, be careful with him,” Lisa said.
Her voice was worried as she came down the stairs, but the blood was gone and her vibrancy had returned. She held Mary safely tucked against her. A look of shocked relief spread over her face as she met his eyes.
“It’s okay,” Dean assured her.
For the first time everything was okay yet Lisa obviously didn’t believe it. Even after she looked him over her free hand tugged up his shirt enough to glimpse the unbroken skin beneath it. Gently her hand roamed over his healed ribs.
Wanting to distract her from what had been, Dean took her hand into his own and gave it a squeeze. “Save it until we get a room.”
She shook her head. “You’re really okay?”
“Yeah.” A genuine smile spilled over Dean’s lips. “I’m really okay.”
Her arm wrapped tightly around him. He returned the hug with one arm while the other went back around Ben and he placed a kiss on the head of his baby girl. When he opened his eyes he saw his brother standing awkwardly by with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Sam, get your ass over here.”
“What?”
“I’m handing out hugs, get them while they’re hot.” Sam probably would’ve looked less shocked if Dean had been trying to stab himself in the heart again. “Seriously, dude. Don’t make me come over there.”
While Sam just looked confused as hell, he did come over. Dean stepped out of the arms of part of his family into the arms of the other. At first Sam’s hold was tentative before it became so strong Dean had to fight for air, but he wasn’t about to complain.
He was holding his brother. Overwhelmed didn’t begin to cover it. Dean blinked back the moisture in his eyes as he patted Sam’s back. When Sam pulled back far enough for Dean to see him, his jaw was clenched. At least his brother was too choked up to comment. Otherwise Dean might have to admit that Lisa had taught him that chick flick moments rocked, on occasion.
Sam wrinkled his nose as he took in a heavy whiff of the air. “I know. I smell like sleazy priest,” Dean said. “I’m gonna hit the shower.”
While whatever the priest had rubbed on him did reek something fierce, it was more of an issue that there was an imminent risk of him losing his remaining speck of manliness if he didn’t haul ass to a more private setting. After a sending a quick smile to his family he headed up the stairs and into the bathroom where the clean clothes Bobby had set out last night still laid on the counter.
Dean had been damn near to a hundred percent sure that he wasn’t coming back. Last time he’d been standing in here he’d been almost as sure that his wife was dead, that his baby would be next and his brother was lost forever. He was okay with not always being right.
Castiel had even assured him that his demonic omens were nothing but a nasty low-pressure system moving through. Whether or not Dean could let himself believe that, he supposed if anyone could forecast the weather it was an angel.
When Dean finished in the shower and left the bedroom the smell of pancakes on the griddle was wafting up the stairs. He’d thought he was too tired to eat, but his stomach had other ideas and rumbled to life. It kicked into high gear as he walked close enough to the kitchen to hear the sizzling of bacon grease.
From the doorway he saw Bobby over the stove flipping pancakes while Ben was excitedly talking to Sam. Dean grinned at the overwhelmed, but engaged expression on his brother’s face and the sound of his wife laughing.
He moved in to kiss Lisa’s smiling lips and slip Mary from her arms into his. “What’d I miss?”
“Ben wants to learn to shoot,” Lisa said. “That’s okay isn’t it?”
Dean waited for the punch line that didn’t come. His wicked wife just took a seat at the table and looked innocently up at him. She was supposed to be his excuse for why Ben couldn’t handle a gun. When she’d freaked out about the Colt he’d thought for sure they were on the same side with that one.
“Sure,” Dean replied as he took the seat beside her. “Over my permanently dead body.”
Ben gave an indignant sigh and looked desperately between Sam and Lisa before his pleadingly eyes keyed in on Dean. “Come on, I totally saved Grandpa Bobby’s ass…butt,” Ben quickly corrected when Dean cleared his throat.
Turning away from the stove, Bobby dished the first batch of pancakes onto the plate in front of Dean. “You know, the kid is a natural. It really ain’t a bad idea.”
“You’re right. It’s not a bad idea.” Dean rested Mary on his knee before shooting Bobby a glare. “It’s a horrible idea.”
Dean grabbed a fork and scooped up one of the pancakes from his plate to toss onto Ben’s before he passed one each onto Lisa and Sam’s plates. While Sam’s eyes fixed on him Dean worked on drowning his remaining pancake in a lake of syrup.
“We’re not talking about shooting monsters,” Sam said. “Just bottles and clay pigeons.”
After shoving a mouthful of pancake into his mouth, Dean jabbed his fork at Sam. “Keep talking about it and I’m gonna shoot you. Once you start shooting skeets...”
“Dean, skeet shooting isn’t a gateway drug,” Lisa offered. “It’d be the perfect hobby for you two.”
Bobby piled another stack of pancakes onto Dean’s plate. As stubborn as he was, Dean knew when he was hopelessly out numbered. He also wasn’t all that sure he was right. Someday Cas wasn’t going to show or Ben would pull a Jo and decide he was going to take up hunting just on account that Dean told him not to.
“It’d be a good hobby for the three of us,” Dean corrected with a smile towards his brother. Dean pulled his giggling baby girl closer to his chest. “You’re gonna have to wait a few years, sweetheart.”
Sam pushed away his plate and ran a hand through his hair before meeting Dean’s eyes. “Dean...you get that I can’t stay.”
“Don’t give me that crap. If the major leagues come aground again, we’ll deal with it. Until then it won’t kill you to take some time to be with your family.”
“It’s not my family.”
“Wasn’t mine either. Now they are, and so are you, so put on your big kid panties and suck it up.” Dean lifted Mary and held her out to his brother. With a beaming grin Mary reached for Sam. “It’s purely mercenary anyway. I need someone who knows geometry and I can’t afford a freakin’ tutor.” At Ben’s look Dean shot his son a wink.
When Sam gingerly accepted Mary into his arms there was no trace of the blankness Dean had earlier seen in Sam’s eyes. While it was impossible to pin down the mix of emotions there now, in it Dean saw his brother. Not some screwed up shadow of who Sam used to be, but his Sammy.
His brother wasn’t locked in some cage in the pit. He was sitting at Bobby’s table with Dean’s wife and his son, holding his daughter. Even if it was only for this moment, Dean knew for a fact that heaven couldn’t hold a candle to that.
Summary: Two years after losing his brother, Dean has settled down and started a new family, but he’s never forgotten the family he left behind and his past has not forgotten him.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, ritual abuse and nudity with children present, but not involved. Distorted uses of biblical quotes/Christian doctrine/ceremony.
Spoilers: Through early Season 6
Word Count: 3,380 for this chapter
Author’s Note: Diverges from canon about two minutes before the end of ‘Swan Song’ (no Sam spying on Dean and Lisa).
Written for spn_reversebang. The beautiful art featured along with this story was illustrated by puguita, whose art prompt and bountiful creativity inspired the story. All her illustrations can be found together at the art master post.
A million worlds of thanks to the truly awesome agent_jl36 and ebony_quill for their scene edits and the tremendously kind durtydeefla82 for taking the time to do a read through and edits for the whole shebang on extremely short notice.
The story master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 10
After a dressing room layover on some deserted island that Castiel had deemed private, the angel dropped them back at Bobby’s. Dean’s brow creased as he took in the trashed living room. While there were no bodies, all the other signs of a fight were still there from the out of place furniture to the scattered papers that littered the floor. The unsettled feeling in Dean’s gut reared back up at the proof that the bastards had made it this far.
Dean forced a smirk when he turned to see Bobby staring at them. “Hey, Bobby. I see you got the number for my interior decorator.”
In a few quick strides Bobby closed in on Dean. After giving Dean a quick look over Bobby pulled him into his arms. In that instant it hit Dean that he really was still here. There was still a chance to make this work. Tightly he gripped Bobby back until the older man pulled away.
A flash of anger flared over Bobby’s eyes. With a growl Bobby gripped the front of Dean’s shirt. “You ever pull a stunt like that again...”
“What?” Dean gave a dismissive glance to Bobby’s fist. “You’ll kill me?”
Slowly Bobby’s fingers released Dean’s t-shirt. “I oughta just on principal.”
“Get in line. We’re back to taking numbers on that.”
Bobby shook his head and patted his hand over Dean’s chest. “Boy, when you gonna learn that you’re more than a body to be sacrificed?”
There wasn’t anything Dean could say that Bobby would want to hear. It wasn’t as if he got off on playing the sacrificial lamb, but he wasn’t ever going to play it safe when his family was on the line. Avoiding it entirely, Dean looked back to Castiel.
“Thanks for popping down to save my ass...again.” Castiel’s face was lined with dissatisfaction. While Dean didn’t expect the angel to be jumping for joy, he’d expected something a little less grim. “Cas, for the record, that’s a good thing.”
“Agreed. I only apologize it wasn’t soon enough to spare your suffering.”
Dean rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably and waved Castiel off. “No problem. I always say any death you can walk away from is a good one. Right, Sammy?”
His brother pulled his eyes up from the floor, his expression looking even gloomier than the damn pouting angel. “Yeah. Sure, Dean.”
“Is anyone glad I’m alive?” While it was mostly a joke, he wasn’t too sure with all the long faces. “Where the hell is everyone anyway?”
“They’re upstairs.” Bobby looked between Castiel and Sam before narrowing his eyes on Dean. “Just how bad did it get?”
Dean shrugged. “It’s better now.”
Even his face fell when he really thought about the people they’d left behind. Sam had told him that he’d smoked Father Reed, but there were a lot of confused kids there with parents that had been counting on today being the apocalypse.
“Except, now we got a bunch of half crazed fanatics a whacko short of a Jonestown.”
“I will attend to the congregation and the text,” Castiel said and apparently the angel meant right now because in the next instant he was gone.
“Yeah, okay, but no smiting the kids!” Dean called after him.
The pounding of footsteps upstairs immediately followed Dean’s shout. “Dad!”
Ben flew around the corner and down the steps so fast he skidded at the bottom. Dean grunted as his son practically plowed him over before throwing his arms around him.
“Ben, be careful with him,” Lisa said.
Her voice was worried as she came down the stairs, but the blood was gone and her vibrancy had returned. She held Mary safely tucked against her. A look of shocked relief spread over her face as she met his eyes.
“It’s okay,” Dean assured her.
For the first time everything was okay yet Lisa obviously didn’t believe it. Even after she looked him over her free hand tugged up his shirt enough to glimpse the unbroken skin beneath it. Gently her hand roamed over his healed ribs.
Wanting to distract her from what had been, Dean took her hand into his own and gave it a squeeze. “Save it until we get a room.”
She shook her head. “You’re really okay?”
“Yeah.” A genuine smile spilled over Dean’s lips. “I’m really okay.”
Her arm wrapped tightly around him. He returned the hug with one arm while the other went back around Ben and he placed a kiss on the head of his baby girl. When he opened his eyes he saw his brother standing awkwardly by with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Sam, get your ass over here.”
“What?”
“I’m handing out hugs, get them while they’re hot.” Sam probably would’ve looked less shocked if Dean had been trying to stab himself in the heart again. “Seriously, dude. Don’t make me come over there.”
While Sam just looked confused as hell, he did come over. Dean stepped out of the arms of part of his family into the arms of the other. At first Sam’s hold was tentative before it became so strong Dean had to fight for air, but he wasn’t about to complain.
He was holding his brother. Overwhelmed didn’t begin to cover it. Dean blinked back the moisture in his eyes as he patted Sam’s back. When Sam pulled back far enough for Dean to see him, his jaw was clenched. At least his brother was too choked up to comment. Otherwise Dean might have to admit that Lisa had taught him that chick flick moments rocked, on occasion.
Sam wrinkled his nose as he took in a heavy whiff of the air. “I know. I smell like sleazy priest,” Dean said. “I’m gonna hit the shower.”
While whatever the priest had rubbed on him did reek something fierce, it was more of an issue that there was an imminent risk of him losing his remaining speck of manliness if he didn’t haul ass to a more private setting. After a sending a quick smile to his family he headed up the stairs and into the bathroom where the clean clothes Bobby had set out last night still laid on the counter.
Dean had been damn near to a hundred percent sure that he wasn’t coming back. Last time he’d been standing in here he’d been almost as sure that his wife was dead, that his baby would be next and his brother was lost forever. He was okay with not always being right.
Castiel had even assured him that his demonic omens were nothing but a nasty low-pressure system moving through. Whether or not Dean could let himself believe that, he supposed if anyone could forecast the weather it was an angel.
When Dean finished in the shower and left the bedroom the smell of pancakes on the griddle was wafting up the stairs. He’d thought he was too tired to eat, but his stomach had other ideas and rumbled to life. It kicked into high gear as he walked close enough to the kitchen to hear the sizzling of bacon grease.
From the doorway he saw Bobby over the stove flipping pancakes while Ben was excitedly talking to Sam. Dean grinned at the overwhelmed, but engaged expression on his brother’s face and the sound of his wife laughing.
He moved in to kiss Lisa’s smiling lips and slip Mary from her arms into his. “What’d I miss?”
“Ben wants to learn to shoot,” Lisa said. “That’s okay isn’t it?”
Dean waited for the punch line that didn’t come. His wicked wife just took a seat at the table and looked innocently up at him. She was supposed to be his excuse for why Ben couldn’t handle a gun. When she’d freaked out about the Colt he’d thought for sure they were on the same side with that one.
“Sure,” Dean replied as he took the seat beside her. “Over my permanently dead body.”
Ben gave an indignant sigh and looked desperately between Sam and Lisa before his pleadingly eyes keyed in on Dean. “Come on, I totally saved Grandpa Bobby’s ass…butt,” Ben quickly corrected when Dean cleared his throat.
Turning away from the stove, Bobby dished the first batch of pancakes onto the plate in front of Dean. “You know, the kid is a natural. It really ain’t a bad idea.”
“You’re right. It’s not a bad idea.” Dean rested Mary on his knee before shooting Bobby a glare. “It’s a horrible idea.”
Dean grabbed a fork and scooped up one of the pancakes from his plate to toss onto Ben’s before he passed one each onto Lisa and Sam’s plates. While Sam’s eyes fixed on him Dean worked on drowning his remaining pancake in a lake of syrup.
“We’re not talking about shooting monsters,” Sam said. “Just bottles and clay pigeons.”
After shoving a mouthful of pancake into his mouth, Dean jabbed his fork at Sam. “Keep talking about it and I’m gonna shoot you. Once you start shooting skeets...”
“Dean, skeet shooting isn’t a gateway drug,” Lisa offered. “It’d be the perfect hobby for you two.”
Bobby piled another stack of pancakes onto Dean’s plate. As stubborn as he was, Dean knew when he was hopelessly out numbered. He also wasn’t all that sure he was right. Someday Cas wasn’t going to show or Ben would pull a Jo and decide he was going to take up hunting just on account that Dean told him not to.
“It’d be a good hobby for the three of us,” Dean corrected with a smile towards his brother. Dean pulled his giggling baby girl closer to his chest. “You’re gonna have to wait a few years, sweetheart.”
Sam pushed away his plate and ran a hand through his hair before meeting Dean’s eyes. “Dean...you get that I can’t stay.”
“Don’t give me that crap. If the major leagues come aground again, we’ll deal with it. Until then it won’t kill you to take some time to be with your family.”
“It’s not my family.”
“Wasn’t mine either. Now they are, and so are you, so put on your big kid panties and suck it up.” Dean lifted Mary and held her out to his brother. With a beaming grin Mary reached for Sam. “It’s purely mercenary anyway. I need someone who knows geometry and I can’t afford a freakin’ tutor.” At Ben’s look Dean shot his son a wink.
When Sam gingerly accepted Mary into his arms there was no trace of the blankness Dean had earlier seen in Sam’s eyes. While it was impossible to pin down the mix of emotions there now, in it Dean saw his brother. Not some screwed up shadow of who Sam used to be, but his Sammy.
His brother wasn’t locked in some cage in the pit. He was sitting at Bobby’s table with Dean’s wife and his son, holding his daughter. Even if it was only for this moment, Dean knew for a fact that heaven couldn’t hold a candle to that.