Strange Brew 5/10
Title: Strange Brew
Author: safiyabat
Artist: Stormbrite
Rating: PG-13
Genre/pairing: Gen
Characters: Sam Winchester, John Winchester, Dean Winchester
Word count: 51,698 (fic) / 5,133 (chapter)
Summary: Sam faces the consequences of his decision. The brothers discuss victimology.
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Mentions of domestic abuse and sexual assault, not relating to the brothers.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. No, really.
Susan was duly summoned, delighted to have the excuse of the sudden arrival of her friend to get her out of farm chores. “I talked to the moms,” she told him dejectedly. “They all said absolutely not when I told them about the mausoleum - not without an escort, and no one has time today. They’re weeding.”
Sam tilted his head. “I could do some weeding,” he offered. “Then it would go even faster.”
The redhead snorted. “As if! Sure you know cows, and you’re learning about herbs. I don’t know if you’d know the difference between some of our herbs and a weed yet! Besides.” She stuck her hands on her hips. “We have the perfect excuse to go out spend hours on the swings and make fun of the chickens. Why would we not go do that? We’re kids! Come on!”
He nodded. Playing on the swings definitely seemed like an awesome idea.
They did spend some time playing on the swings and climbing trees, just running and having a good time before Mama Christine called them in for dinner. Tonight they were having bean stew, something that smelled magnificent even before Sam finished washing up. He said as much to Susan, who laughed at him. “I keep forgetting that you don’t get real food when you’re with your family.”
“We eat real food!” he objected. “It’s not fairy dust or something!”
“Well, no,” she admitted. “But it all comes from fast food joints and diners, you said. That’s not good for you.”
“It’s not nice to criticize someone’s diet in front of them, Susan,” chided Mama Rachel. “But home cooking is generally cleaner, better for you. It’s not possible for everyone, I guess, but it’s the cleanest.”
Sam nodded. He liked clean things. If he put enough clean things into himself, maybe he could become clean.
“So, Sam,” Mama Laura began, tone mild. “Can you tell us a little bit about how you managed to get lost up in the state park? It’s closed this year, is all, and there shouldn’t have been anyone up there.”
He swallowed. “It’s closed this year? Oh, I guess we didn’t know.”
“Sam and his family only moved in a couple of weeks ago,” Star explained, hand on Sam’s head. “They would’ve missed all the hubbub about budget cuts and everything.”
He nodded, grateful to his mentor for covering for him. “So Dad took us up there to explore and look around a bit - he likes to do that on Saturday - and I guess I got separated from the others.”
Mama Kelly frowned. “Sam, you should always stay in place when you get lost in the woods. It’s easiest for rescuers to find you that way.”
“Yes ma’am.” He nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. This - well, it happens sometimes, I get distracted, and so we have a plan we follow when it happens. I usually just find the nearest road and try to make contact with Dad somehow.” He offered his best dimpled smile. “Dad usually knows how best to find me, or he knows I’ll find a policeman to get me home.” As if, he thought to himself, struggling to keep up the cute-little-kid act. He’d been firmly convinced his father was going to kill him earlier. Winchesters avoided cops, and right now Sam could see why.
All four Moms made disapproving sounds in the backs of their throats. “Oh,” Mama Rachel said for all of them. “I suppose that’s worked out for you so far, but it would really be safest for you to stay in place. You never know who might find you out there.”
He beamed at her. “Thanks’ ma’am. I’ll do that next time. Of course, I hope there won’t be a next time. Hey, is the sage in this stew the same sage that you grow here on the farm?”
Kelly gave a broad smile, flattered. “It sure is. How can you tell?”
“It has the same scent. It has such a great flavor, ma’am.”
“Sam’s developed an interest in herbology,” Star informed her mothers. “We’ve been talking about it at the program down at the library.”
All four moms, as well as the older daughters, looked reasonably impressed. “Has he now?” asked Mama Laura.
“He sure has. Copied down every word of that giant text we have at the library too, so he’d be sure to remember it better.” She nudged him when he blushed. “Hey, don’t be embarrassed, it’s okay to have an interest in things like that. You never know when you might find it useful.”
“Like when you’re all lost in the woods and need to know what’s safe to eat,” teased Susan.
“That’s a very good example,” Mama Christine nodded. “And some of them have medicinal uses as well, of course. We might have another book you could take a look at if you wanted. It’s a reprint of an old colonial manual that describes how to take some of those same plants and use them - kind of a next step, if you’d be interested. Of course, you’d want to cross-reference them with other, more modern books; I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to use wormwood to treat gout anymore. That could be a fun project for you.”
He bit his lip. It would be a fun project, but if Dad made him leave then he’d essentially be stealing the book. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to your book,” he declined, shaking his head.
“Nonsense,” she waved her hand. “I’m the one who translated it, I’ve got tons of author’s copies lying around. You can just have it. There’s plenty more where that came from. Just remember, this is for learning only - don’t go thinking you’re a doctor. These people died a lot.” She winked at him and he couldn’t help but laugh.
After dinner, Sam and Susan helped clean the dishes before Star gave him a ride home. He had his new book in his hand, heavy and fresh and new and all his. “Sam,” she began. “Look, I’m glad to see you, and it was nice that you stopped by. But… you weren’t really lost up there, were you?”
“I was really lost!” Tears sprung to his eyes. “I wasn’t lying, I promise! I was lost, I promise! I was up there, and there was a road that was only sort of paved, and I followed it until I saw your street name!”
“Okay, Sam. Okay. It’s okay. But how did you really get separated from your family? They don’t usually let you out of their sight for more than a couple of minutes, do they? I mean, they’re pretty strict.”
He didn’t meet her eyes. She was too smart; she’d figure him out in a second. “I get distracted by things,” he told her. It wasn’t a lie. “And I’m kind of slow.”
“You’ve got an awful lot of bruises on your arms, Sam,” she continued. “And if you’d gotten up there normally, you’d have had a better idea of where you were. You wouldn’t have had to ‘figure out’ that you were on the back end of our land.” She glanced at him. “Is someone hurting you, Sam?”
“I was roughhousing with my brother.” His voice sounded flat, even to his own ears.
“Those bruises are in the shape of a hand, Sam.” She pulled the truck over and put on the hazard lights. “Please be honest with me. I’m not going to call the police unless you want me to. I’m not a teacher, I’m not a mandated reporter. But I do want to help you.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Sam.”
He bit his lip. She’d figured out enough, and if he didn’t give her something she’d make assumptions about the rest. Probably bad ones. He sighed. “My mom died when I was a baby - murdered. My dad can be kind of, um. Paranoid. Obsessed with training us, so we’re ‘ready.’ He decided that today was a good day to train for being dropped into the middle of the forest with no supplies, because in his head this happens all of the time and you have to be ‘ready.’” His eye roll wasn’t feigned. “I wasn’t warned. He just grabbed me and blindfolded me. I thought he was going to kill me and so I fought back. Hard. That’s why the bruises are there, he was holding onto me. That’s all.”
“That’s all.” Her jaw dropped. “Sam, that was about five million kinds of wrong.”
“I know, I shouldn’t have fought -“
“Sam - Sam, no. It was wrong of him to do that to a ten-year-old boy. You must have been so scared!” She threw her arms around him and pulled him in close.
“Once I got the blindfold off I guess I was okay,” he blushed. He didn’t see what the big deal was. Dad hadn’t killed him, apparently hadn’t planned on killing him. Not today anyway. “I mean, I got to safety, right?”
“Damn straight you did. Are you sure you want to go back there? Because we can make up a bed for you, we’ve got the space and we can figure out what to do about your dad until he calms down -“
He grinned a little. “Oh, I’m sure. It’ll be fine. I mean, my orders were to survive the next twenty-four hours, right? That was all. He didn’t say I had to stay there, didn’t say I couldn’t leave.”
She looked dubious. “Okay, if you’re sure. But just so you know, if you’re not at program on Tuesday I’m calling the police.”
Sam’s limbs felt shaky. He’d betrayed his family - hampered his father, because who knew if they’d need to run out in the middle of the night? But at the same time, someone was keeping an eye out for him. Someone was worried about him. And that felt incredible. “Thanks, Star.”
She ruffled his hair. “Don’t worry about it, Sam. That’s what I’m here for.”
The rest of the ride was a lot less tense.
Dad and Dean weren’t at home when Star dropped Sam off. He picked the lock easily and let himself in. His bedroll had been moved from where he had carefully stashed it and for a moment, a sinking, terrifying moment, he thought that Dad had just gotten rid of it. Maybe he’d planned to go back and kill him tomorrow, or maybe he’d figured Sam would just up and die out there all alone on the hill. It would figure - he’d never liked Sam, never wanted him. He even thought Sam might not be his son - he’d never said so, but he’d written it down right there in his journal. Maybe he’d just figured that this would be how he’d rid himself of an unfortunate changeling. For a few seconds, Sam felt that same sense of panic rising up in him. His vision started to black out around the edges and he thought he might lose some of the delicious bean stew he’d eaten at the Teall farm.
Then he found his bedroll, tucked away on top of the kitchen cabinets. He could reach it if he climbed up on top of the stove, which wasn’t the brightest move he’d ever made but he’d do what he had to. They hadn’t planned for him to die. He shook his head to erase the thought. Dad hadn’t planned for him to die, he corrected himself. Dean hadn’t planned anything either way. But Dad hadn’t planned to get rid of him, just put any reminders of his existence out of visual range while he was gone.
Sam could accept that. He wouldn’t want to be reminded of something like him either, to be honest.
Either way, he had his blankets and his old pillow, and he had enough light to read by between the waning natural light and then a little flashlight.
Dad and Dean came back from whatever it was that they were doing and when they came into the trailer their guns were drawn. Sam had expected that; they were essentially coming home to find an intruder in their home, after all. “Sammy?” Dean recognized, seeing his little brother curled up on the floor with his book and flashlight. “What the hell are you doing? You’re supposed to be -“
“In the woods, waiting for bears to eat me?” Sam finished with a snort. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
John’s face went red, then white. “I told you the parameters of that exercise, boy,” he seethed. “Your mission was to survive the next twenty-four hours!”
“And assuming you don’t shoot me I still will,” Sam pointed out. He’d been scared before; now he was just angry. This wasn’t a fly-off-the-handle anger, though. No, this was a cold, quiet rage. “Your orders -“
“My orders were to stay up on that hill!”
“But that’s not what you said,” Sam reminded him, rising to his feet. “You said to survive. You didn’t give any other instructions, any other orders. So I interpreted them in the way that made the most sense to me.”
“You shouldn’t have even been able to get off that mountain,” Dean pointed out. “You were blindfolded, disoriented. I felt your heart, Sammy. It was beating a mile a minute.”
“Oh, sure. I was terrified. But terrified doesn’t mean stupid. You ditched me next to the side of a road, for crying out loud.” He shook his head.
“We didn’t ‘ditch’ you,” John corrected him, grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking. “That was training! It’s to keep you safe!”
“You took a ten year old kid who was already convinced that you were going to put a bullet in his head, blindfolded him and abandoned him in the woods,” Sam snarled. “Don’t pretend it was anything better than it was.”
“I do what I do for a reason, boy!” John pushed him away, hard. Sam fell back onto the ground, shaking the walls of the trailer. “You need to know how to survive under -“
“And I did exactly that,” Sam spat back. “I used the resources available to me - my brain, my knowledge of the area, my connections. And I made it back to safety or what passes for it, without you.”
John snarled and raised his hand. For just a second, there was murder in his eyes. Then he lowered the hand again. “I’m going out,” he growled, grabbing his jacket off the table where he’d flung it. “Don’t wait up.” He stormed out of the trailer, slamming the door behind him.
Sam sank back down onto his bedroll, pulse still racing. He didn’t think his knees would hold him up. “Nice going, turdbreath,” Dean complained, flopping onto the couch. “He was going to stay in tonight with me and work on grappling. Sober,” he added pointedly.
Sam shrugged. He hadn’t meant to get Dean pissed at him, although he could see where his brother would be upset by the loss of a night alone with his hero. It probably reminded him of the time before, that magical time that Dean had been an only child and they’d been able to do normal father-and-son things, and dirty old Sam had just come along and screwed it up. Again. “Sorry. Wasn’t keen on getting eaten by bears.”
“There aren’t any bears around here, Sammy.” Dean rolled over so he was looking at his brother. “Jesus. Dad wouldn’t have dropped you in the middle of the woods like that if he thought there were bears.”
Sam sniffed. “Actually Onondaga County has plenty of black bears, Dean. And a site like that old state park is a perfect environment for them.”
“It’s a state park, Sammy. They have rangers for that!”
“It was shut down for budgetary reasons, Dean. There aren’t any rangers. Perfect bear territory. Or whatever else gets blamed on bears.” He picked up his flashlight and returned to his book.
“Dude. Dad wouldn’t put you in danger like that. Isn’t he always saying ‘Watch out for Sam?’” Dean shook his head. “What the hell got into you earlier, anyway? Accusing Dad of trying to kill you? What was up with that?”
Sam sighed. Dean worshipped Dad, idolized him. Sam couldn’t understand it, but he noticed it nevertheless. “You haven’t read the journal.”
“No. He said not to.”
“So?” Sam put the flashlight down. “You know he’s keeping secrets from us.”
“For our own good, Sammy. We have to trust him. He knows what he’s doing and he keeps us safe.”
“Dean, we’ve never been safe. Not since I was six months old. You can’t seriously think that dragging us from hunt to hunt isn’t putting us in harm’s way.” He flopped down onto the ground, unconsciously mirroring Dean’s gesture from earlier.
“He’s doing what he has to do, Sammy. If we’re going to be hunters, we have to know how to do this stuff. The only way to learn it is by doing it.” Dean shook his head.
“We’d be safer if we weren’t hunting.” Sam rolled over and returned to his book.
“But we’re going to be hunters.” Dean scoffed. “Come on, man. What’s next? Cotton candy trees? Get real. Quit thinking there’s something else for us; it’s only going to make you unhappy. Just accept that Dad knows what he’s doing, that he’s doing everything for a reason, and do what the hell he tells you.” He paused. “It was kind of funny what you did tonight though.”
Sam paused, a shy little smile breaking through. “Yeah?”
“Well I mean, he didn’t order you to stay in that spot. You outsmarted him. When he sobers up he’ll appreciate that. Don’t get used to it, though. He’s not going to let it happen again.”
Sam rolled over again. “Dean, tell me more about the case.”
“Sammy, you know Dad doesn’t want you involved.”
“He’s stalled. That’s why he’s such an asshole lately.” Sam turned a page in his book, realized he hadn’t processed anything on the last page and flipped back. “Look. I know that you’re not supposed to be sharing but just let me see, okay? It worked in Bardstown.”
Dean gave a little laugh. “Yeah, it did. And Dad will be out for a while.” He got off the couch and went to their father’s room.
Sam hadn’t necessarily meant right that minute. He’d done a lot of hiking that day on top of some brutal training and his body throbbed. Still, people were dying. Wasn’t it Dad who told him he was selfish for thinking of his own body? If he was going to be part of the family business - and he was getting some very mixed signals on that - he needed to get used to the feeling. “So what do you know about the victims?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Dean wanted to know.
Sam sat up and braced his back against the couch. “Well, whenever you have a serial killer they catch him by figuring out what the victims have in common. Witches are humans, right?” His brother nodded. “So it’s probably a good place for us to start too.”
Dean thought about it as he handed a stack of papers over. “Well. That makes sense, I guess, although I gotta say, your thing about serial killers is creepy.”
“It’s a hobby.”
“It’s a sickness.” Dean shook his head. “But the first thing is that they’re all dudes.”
“Okay.” Sam thought about it. “Well, your next victim is probably a guy too.”
Dean cuffed him on the back of his head. “You’re so helpful, asswipe.”
“Dudes are like almost half of the population, Douchezilla. I need more to go on than that. What else can you tell me about them?” Sam started flipping through the files their father had on the men. “Oh. Okay. They all had records.”
“Accusations, Sammy,” Dean corrected. “Only some of them had convictions. But yeah. I guess that they’d all had some kind of criminal complaint.”
Sam laid out one file. “This is the guy who was stung by bees, when the library program first started up. Gordon Lukasz. He’s got at least one prior conviction for felony assault and had an open accusation of sexual assault for ‘forcible touching.’” He scanned the report. “Looks like a lot of women complained about him. They dropped the charges when he sobered up.”
Dean squirmed. “That happens a lot in bars, Sammy. A guy has a little too much to drink, thinks a girl is more willing than she is, things get out of hand - doesn’t mean a guy should be stung to death by a million bees.” He grimaced. “I mean, why does the witch get to decide?”
Sam pulled the next file out. “Lucky bachelor number two. Not so much a bachelor - married, father of four. Lived on a dairy farm right here in Tully.”
“Oh, the cow guy,” Dean recalled. “This is the one that got us pulled here.”
Sam looked up at the wall and pondered how he’d feel about going out with a legacy like “the cow guy.” “Make sure you salt and burn but good when I die, Dean,” he decided. “Anyway, it looks like your ‘cow guy’ had the cops called on him nineteen times in the past year thanks to neighbors. All domestics. Hospital trips for three of four kids on ten of those occasions, but no one said a word.”
Dean squirmed. “I mean, he’s their dad. Maybe we don’t know the whole story. I mean, sure, it looks bad, but how many times have we had to tell some giant whoppers to keep away from social services ourselves, huh, Sammy?” He shook his head. “The fact that it looks bad - and I’ll agree that it looks bad - doesn’t give the witch the right to play judge and jury, is all I’m saying.”
Sam couldn’t argue that one. After all, they had a legal system in this country for a reason. He’d learned about it at seven different schools last year, with seven different explanations for basically the same thing. “That’s not the point, Dean,” he told his brother. “You don’t need to sell me on why the witch shouldn’t be killing people. I don’t like killing people at all, remember? I’m trying to figure out what it is that is drawing the witch to these people, what the pattern is.”
“Sorry.” Dean scratched his head. “Sometimes I wonder.”
“I mean, the witch seems to be killing assholes from what I can see. Number three, level three sex offender, dead of - Dean, what’s auto-erotic asphyxia?”
“I asked Dad the same thing. He wouldn’t say,” the teenager admitted. “I’ll let you know. But I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t be a good way to go if it’s how a witch whammied you.”
Sam silently admitted the truth of this. “Number five. Complaints against him of taking pictures - what is this? Taking pictures up girls’ skirts?” He pushed the file away from him. “Dude. Gross. I think we can see the pattern.”
Dean fished the files out of his arms and looked through them. “Looks like we’ve got two more wife beaters slash child beaters and another rapist,” he counted, adding them to the piles. “You’re right. We’ve got a pattern. What does that tell us?”
Sam sighed. “The witch probably thinks they’re helping people.”
Dean stood up. “Helping people? They’re killing people!”
“Sure. But try to think about it from their point of view. I mean, you and Dad, what are you going to do when you catch up to the witch, huh?” Sam hung his head and let his shaggy hair hide his face.
“Well, we’ll kill her, Sammy. She’s using evil powers to kill people. She has to die.”
“So you’ll kill her because she’s a monster,” Sam prodded.
“Well, yeah.”
The boy sighed. “In her head, she’s killing monsters too. This is just… this is just the only way she knows how.” Something occurred to him. “All of those victims, they all have multiple accusations against them, but nothing’s happened. Or they’ve been released after a short sentence, like the sex offender with the auto- auto-whatsits.”
Dean nodded, sitting back on the couch and leaning forward. “I’m with you so far.”
“So, they have no faith in the system to deal with these people by normal means.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how helpful that is. I’d need more information. You know, to figure anything else out.”
“I’m sure we can get that for you.” Dean sighed and lay back down on the couch. “It’s not like this witch is going to stop killing. It’s up to us to stop her.” He rolled over. “Don’t stay up too late, now.”
Sam turned off the light. He’d lost his concentration anyway.
His father stumbled in as the sun rose. How he’d managed to drive home Sam had no idea, but apparently he had. The child feigned sleep as his father stood in the doorway to their borrowed home, staring down at him.
The good thing about their father getting quite that wrecked was that they got out of running, for the second time since they’d moved in. The down side was that Dad had a hangover, and it was a bad one. He nursed it with beer from a cooler and some aspirin for a little while, and by about three in the afternoon he demanded that Sam come and talk to him.
Part of Sam shivered in terror. The other part froze from a different emotion. He let that side control him, standing straight and tall as he met his father’s eyes. “Sir?”
“I’ve been thinking about your little stunt yesterday,” his father grunted out, pain lines still clear on his face. “And I’m not going to lie. I’m still pissed that you defied me. You knew what I wanted from you and you didn’t do it. At the same time, you found a loophole in the orders that I gave you and you exploited it. You got home safely - and any soldier will do that. Any soldier who has any way of figuring out his location will use it to get to safety. That was a normal response, a good response.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure that you found some way to dawdle and waste time out there,” he scowled at Sam’s amazed face. “I know you, Sam, and your mind is not on the hunt or on your training. You’d rather find a way to get out of your job than learn how to back your brother and me up, and that’s going to get one of us killed someday. But in this case, you did what anyone else would do.”
“Thank you, sir.” Sam had so much else he wanted to say, but he could see Dean standing just over their father’s shoulder. He didn’t want to disappoint him.
“You know, I had your brother doing the same exercises when he was just eight. You’ve had a reprieve for two years, you know.” John tried to give him a stern look over a mug of cold coffee.
Sam had trouble taking the stern look seriously. “Did you jump him after training, hold him down and blindfold him without warning or was that just special for me?”
Dean held up his hands. “Hey. Don’t go bringing me into this.”
“So no.”
John smacked his hand down on the table and then winced at the noise. “I didn’t need to do that to him. Your brother trusted me. If I’d have told you what I wanted to do you’d have just fought me, tried to argue me out of it.”
“And you’d have done what you wanted to do anyway, just like always.” Sam shrugged. “Literally all that you accomplished was leaving a bunch of bruises and making it that much harder for me to ever trust you.”
“I am your father, you spoiled little brat,” John seethed. “Nothing happened. There was no reason for your girly little panic attack, you survived just fine. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you and you damn well know it.”
“I don’t know any such thing. You’re always putting Dean and me into dangerous situations, trying to get us killed, and then expect me to just roll over and somehow not think you’re trying to kill me when you grab me out of the blue and try to blindfold me? Is this a joke?”
“Damn it, Sam, I have kept you safe for ten years and I don’t think a little trust is too much to ask!”
“You’ve been trying to get me killed for ten years,” Sam retorted. “You just haven’t told me why.” He got up and grabbed his book. “I’ll be outside.”
“Sam!” his father yelled. “Get back here - ugh.”
The boy walked outside, defying his father and finding an old log to use as a stool. The next few hours passed in blessed bliss, just him in the sun reading about plants and their uses. The sun beat down hotly, and maybe it would have been nice to have some water or a bite to eat, but there was no way he was going back in there.
A few hours later Dean came out. His face looked drawn and maybe a little gray. “You really upset Dad back there, kiddo. You should go back in there and apologize.”
“He grabbed me out of the blue, blindfolded me, made me think he was going to shoot me and leave me in a ditch, he did abandon me in the woods someplace strange and you think I should apologize to him?” He closed his book. “Not going to happen.”
“Sammy. He’s teaching us how to be safe. You don’t know when you’re going to find yourself abandoned out in the woods. You could be kidnapped and released someplace like that, just like yesterday. Or a ghost or other monster could teleport you someplace you don’t know - I’ve heard there are some trickster spirits that can do that, I’ve never met one but they’re out there. A witch could do it no problem. You just don’t know. This line of work, it takes us up against anything, so we have to be ready for anything. You have to prepare, you have to train.”
“Or I could, you know, go into a different line of work,” Sam suggested.
Dean shook his head and rolled his eyes in disgust. “Would you quit it with that stuff? That’s not an option. We fight. You’re gonna hunt. It’s all you’re gonna do, it’s all we’re gonna do. It’s for Mom. Mom’s the only thing that matters, Sammy.” Dean went back into the house, shaking his head sadly as he walked.
Sam sighed and turned back to his book.
Back to Chapter Four -- On to Chapter Six