fic: Lost Symphony
Title: Lost Symphony
Betas and readers: lizzy_someone, kaiserkuchen; dagnirovanaliel, koushirouhan, shakti9
Fandom Supernatural
Characters: biracial!Dean Winchester, biracial!Sam Winchester, black/female!Castiel, John Winchester, Bobby Singer, Jessica Moore, Cassie Robinson, Kat & Gavin, OCs; off screen: Mary Ahn Winchester
Rating: T
Word count: 3719
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary: Mary Ahn Winchester died on the ceiling of the nursery on November 2, 1983.
Author's Note: So! Since I’m still relatively new to LJ fandom this is the first summer I’m participating in (multi)fandom-wide ficathons and challenges.
dark_agenda’s Racebending Revenge Ficathon is the first of three this summer to go live. This is also the most powerful and meaningful challenge I’ve participated in because a lot of what’s in this fic is either very close to my heart or exaggerated examples of what the ethnicity/race I identify with go through on a daily basis. Biracial characters add more complexity to the story, and I’ve had the honor of having two biracial people (one is from the US, the other is not) beta this for me to make sure I didn’t screw it up too badly. If you have any questions, concerns, issues, whatever, please don’t be afraid to include it in the comments. I’d love to either explain why I did what I did or understand where I totally blew it.
By the way, the minimum word count was 500. I aimed for 600. That worked out well. And yes, the open-ended nature and the open threads of plot are there on purpose - I do want to return to this universe in the near future.
The creature that walked through the doors was human. Woman-shaped, despite the long beige trench coat swaying around it-her legs. She was tall, slender, and utterly unperturbed by the showers of sparks overhead or the bullets Dean and Bobby kept firing.
Her heart-shaped face turned to Dean when he grabbed Ruby’s knife. He swallowed hard; her eyes could burn.
“Who are you?” he demanded. All those sigils, all that rock salt and consecrated bullets, and she still stood there, was in fact stepping close to him, tilting her head up as she spoke.
“I’m the one who gripped you tight and pulled you from Perdition.”
Perdition? Hell? He gripped the knife, knowing full well that if this knife did nothing then this creature that wore such a beautiful, terrible face was too powerful for them to handle.
“Yeah, thanks for that,” he said, empty bravado in his words as he stabbed her heart.
She stared at the knife, gave him a look that read “You really think that’s going to stop me?”, grasped the handle, and pulled it out. She didn’t even look when Bobby launched an attack; she grabbed the crowbar, swung him around until they were facing each other, and she pressed two fingertips to his forehead. Bobby crumpled to the floor.
“We need to talk,” she said, stepping over his body. “Alone.”
* * * * *
Hunters never gave a shit who was stuck in the foxhole with them. All that mattered was that she could shoot a gun.
That didn’t mean that they wouldn’t give you a second look or add double the holy water in your whiskey.
He hated it. He hated it as much as he hated the bastard who took their mother and their lives away one cold November night. They were saving people, hunting things, carrying on what he called “the family business” and nobody gave them the respect and dignity they deserved.
The worst part? He had no one to talk to about it. He spent days on the road with just the Impala’s purr and Led Zeppelin shredding his eardrums to make up for it. He fought harder-in graveyards and at the bar-and fucked harder-because he was taking advantage of his looks, no matter what they said about it-to make it all go away.
It never did, and nobody was there to hear him scream.
* * * * *
“If anyone makes fun of you,” John told eight-year-old Dean sternly as they stood outside the brick building, “you deck ‘em. You understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
Dean got sent home that afternoon. His knuckles had disappeared under the Sesame Street bandages and he had a black eye.
“Maybe after a week,” John said after he finished reprimanding him. Sam sat on the bed, a giant coloring book on his lap. He hadn’t colored since Dean came back to the motel room.
“They were making squinty eyes at me,” Dean said. “I didn’t like it. And why do they keep saying ‘ching chong chang’?”
John stilled, the alcohol pad pressing down hard on the scrape over his middle knuckle. Dean tried not to squirm as it burned. Then John let his hand go and knelt down in front of him. Dean stared back, stunned by the anger in his father’s green eyes.
“Tomorrow,” he said slowly, “I’m going to school with you and we’re talking to your teacher. You’re right not to like it. You can’t help who you are and nobody should make fun of you for it.”
Dean nodded once, tongue-tied by his father’s intensity. John then smiled and pulled him into a hug.
“I want a hug, too!” Sam called out from the bed. “Why are we hugging?”
“Because your brother’s very brave,” John said, talking to the tiles in the shower stall. His voice bounced around the bathroom and then out into the motel room. “He’s going to look after you just like I look after him. We look after each other, and nobody makes fun of us. They have no right. You understand?”
Dean stared out to Sam, who looked a touch confused but determined to understand nonetheless.
I’m looking after you, Dean thought. No matter what.
* * * * *
“You have a cultural heritage that not a lot of people can claim,” she said. “You should own it.”
Dean snorted as he picked up the double shot glass. “Lost all chance of that when Mom died,” he said bitterly and Cassie’s face softened with sympathy.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t-”
He shrugged. “It’s in the past.”
He didn’t miss the sadness in her eyes as he knocked back the whiskey.
* * * * *
“You should be a model,” one of the girls-Esther Chen, maybe?-said one day. Sam tried not to squirm under the scrutiny as the others giggled.
“Thanks,” he muttered, ears burning as he glued his face to the book. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should,” Esther said. “You’re way too hot to be a lawyer. Or a doctor. Can you sing?”
“Can I…?” Sam stared at them, jaw unhinged. Sing? No, he can’t sing. He’d been officially banned from singing whenever they went out to karaoke. “No. Why?”
“You’d make a superstar over there. Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand,” Rebecca Kim said, glancing up from her textbook. “Well, if you can’t sing can you act? I bet you can. You’d make such a hot actor. Or a model. Chicks dig hot models, especially mixed ones.”
Sam wanted to crawl under the carpet.
* * * * *
Once Dean felt like eating spaghetti and was spinning the fork in the marinara-coated noodles when a group of men walked by and bumped into him. It felt like they were trying to shove his face into the plate and Dean whirled around.
“Hey, watch it! People are trying to eat here.”
“Whatever, Jap,” one of the men laughed.
“Where’s your chopsticks, huh? How do you work those things anyway?” someone else asked loudly.
“Bring me some and you’ll find out,” Dean growled. He didn’t know how to use chopsticks and wished people would just shut the fuck up about it. He did, however, know how to use two flimsy sticks to inflict the worst pain imaginable to man, and don’t even get him started on the monsters.
* * * * *
“You have any pictures of your mom?” Jessica asked, or at least that’s what he thought she asked but with his head caught in the sweater he couldn’t tell.
“What?” he asked, freeing himself and tossing the sweater on the bed.
“Your mom,” she said. “Do you have pictures of your mom?”
He hesitated, and then wondered where his wallet was. He glanced at his desk and suddenly realized he didn’t have pictures of Dean or their father either.
“I, uh…”
Jessica leaned against the table, arms folded, and stared at him. Sam fidgeted, and then sighed. “Just one. I think it was my dad’s.”
He grabbed his backpack and rooted in it for his wallet. Fingertips found worn leather-it was Dean’s, and before Dean’s it was John’s, and it filled him with memories of their life on the road, of the vengeful spirits and monsters crawling through windows and hiding in attics, John’s looming presence as he told off Randy’s father before dragging them away to shout about starting fights and distracting him away from the werewolf’s tracks-
“Hey, you okay?”
Sam looked up at her, the keen worry in her bright blue eyes, and shook his head. “Sorry, lost track. Here,” and he pulled out the wallet. Mary’s picture was tucked in behind the various IDs Jessica needed not to see so he covered them with his fingers while sliding her picture out with his thumb.
“Oh,” Jessica said softly. “She’s beautiful.”
“That’s what Dean always told me,” Sam said.
She frowned. “What happened to her?”
Something killed her and broke our family. “Fire in the nursery. She didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said, wrapping her arms around him. “So sorry…”
He breathed in the berry scent in her long blonde hair and then turned his head to stare at the photo in her hand, young Mary Ahn with her arms around her fiancé.
* * * * *
Sam did know how to use chopsticks. His friends at Stanford taught him after he revealed he didn’t know how to.
“It was at Panda Express,” Sam explained, working the top stick between his thumb and his index and middle fingers with finesse. Dean tried to not scowl as he stared at them. “Couldn’t hide it forever, not from these guys. It was going to catch up one way or another, so I asked. They made fun of me at first-” And here Dean bristled so Sam changed his tone. “They were teasing, man; they didn’t mean it. I’m not the only half-white kid on campus.”
It didn’t matter. He’d gotten sick of being teased since that first day in school years ago. “You made sure of it?”
Sam smiled with knowing and nostalgia, and Dean averted his eyes, staring down at the sticky orange chicken in the cardboard box.
“Of course. After I managed to pick up the tofu without splitting it in two they said, ‘One of us, one of us,’ and bought some…was it soju? Sake? Can’t remember.”
“Did it taste good?” Dean asked, prodding a piece of chicken with his fork. He’d seen the little frosted bottles every now and then, sometimes stared at the labels like the curvy brush calligraphy would decipher life’s mysteries for him. Then he’d grab a case of Sam Adams and leave.
“You could just ask, you know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He could hear Sam rolling his eyes as he leaned over and grabbed a pair of chopsticks from the plastic bag that proudly said “PANDA EXPRESS”.
“Here, let me show you…”
* * * * *
Dean fell in love with Cassie because she saw what lay underneath his bravado and understood his anger better than anyone ever did. He could have stayed with Lisa, with Ryan, with Maggie, but he didn’t. It was Cassie, and he didn’t know why until he did.
“If you need to talk to someone,” she told him early into their relationship, “talk to me. I’ll listen when nobody else will.”
She dumped him when he told her the truth of his mother’s death and what he really did for a living.
Dean had to stop a mile out from Cape Giradeau to laugh at his sorry state, and then cry because he was alone again.
Until he found Sam.
Until Castiel dragged him out of Hell.
* * * * *
“Why can’t we call the cops?”
Sam braced himself. Dean was always the better of the two at keeping his temper in check - meaning he held it in and pretended nothing’s wrong - but few things set him off in a way that they never did for Sam. Unfortunately, this question was one of them.
“Because they do shit all,” Dean said, his voice as stiff as his shoulders as he checked their supply of rounds.
Sam quickly cut in. “They don’t know how to handle cases like this,” he explained. “The police doesn’t know what’s out there, where to look, how to fight them off-”
“Cops,” Dean interrupted, “don’t give a shit. Never did, never will.”
The college student who never meant to move into an apartment complex infested with gremlins, whirled on him. “Hey, don’t you go disrespecting the police. They do good work. They put their lives on the line so the rest of us can sleep easy at night-”
“Oh yeah? You ever pay attention to the news? All those beatings, all the sloppy follow-ups, Rodney King? You wanna know where jokes about being black while driving fancy cars came from? You wanna know why the cops did shit all after our mom died?”
Sam grabbed the shotgun he’d been loading. “Dean, don’t-”
“Mary Ahn Winchester was Korean. She was Asian, she was yellow, she wasn’t white. Dad insisted something killed her that night and the cops ignored him. Didn’t listen to him. Didn’t care that it wasn’t an electrical fire that left us homeless, that ruined our family forever. If the dead body’s not white why should they care? Why should they listen?”
The student started as her back hit the wall. Her eyes were wide and terrified, and Sam knew that was enough.
“Let it go,” he said. “We’re not here for this. Let’s take care of gremlins first.”
Dean breathed heavily out of his nose, then turned away. “Fine. Wanted to shoot some suckers anyway.”
Sam waited until he was in the other room, shoving hex bags into the room, and then said, “I’m sorry. He’s…really sensitive-”
“I should apologize,” she said shakily, tucking loose strands of hair behind her ear as she stared at the open duffel bag on the dining table. “I didn’t mean…I didn’t know. I mean, I knew that you weren’t…that you were…mixed. Biracial. I just didn’t…think about-”
“You didn’t know. You couldn’t have. We’re here to save you and the other tenants, not share life stories.”
The college student nodded slowly. “Then…did you ever find out what killed your mom?”
Yellow eyes flashed through his memory from the dark crevices where they still haunted him. He thought that with the yellow-eyed demon dead they could move on, live free of his influence, but no, Dean was going to Hell in a few months and Sam was no closer to finding a way to save him. The demon was still breaking his family apart.
“Yeah. We did.”
* * * * *
“We…could take you to a male strip club,” Dean said, fumbling for words while Castiel watched him impassively. He tried not think about the holy vinaigrette in the clay jug next to her arm, or what she’s about to do tomorrow. “Or a female one? How do you swing?”
“I don’t swing. I simply am,” she said, raising her arms and resting them on the table, long fingers lacing together. “I appreciate your concern, Dean, but I am still an angel. I do not require sustenance or sleep or…bodily pleasures.”
He couldn’t tell if this embarrassed her or if she simply didn’t want to talk about it. He leaned over the chair, peering at her face. Not surprisingly she matched his gaze and then tilted her chin up. He stared at her mouth, and then down her slender throat to the collar of her dress shirt.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He coughed and looked away, then pulled out the other chair. He didn’t sit down, though. Instead he stared out through the dusty blinds at the Impala sitting at the curb. “Fine. So what, we’re going to sit here quietly until morning?”
She leveled him with a glare. “You can do whatever you want.”
“No way, man,” Dean said, shaking his head. “I’m not leaving you here while I have fun. You know what, we’re doing shots.” He pulled his jacket off the back of the chair and shrugged it on. “And if you want to pick someone up, well, be my guest. Come on, let’s go.”
* * * * *
“You guys do this for a living?” Kat asked while they loaded their shotguns.
“Yep,” Sam said.
“It’s kind of our job,” Dean added. He elbowed Sam and pointed down the hall. Sam nodded and made a gesture to Kat and Gavin to start walking in the opposite direction.
“Why would anyone want this for a job?” she asked, looking over her shoulder as Dean disappeared around the corner.
“I had a crappy guidance counselor,” Sam said.
Gavin looked a little put out. “And you do this with guns? No magic? No freaky ninja moves-”
“Gavin!” she snapped. Then, “You can’t do ninja moves on something you can’t hit!” And, “That’s offensive!”
“What? What did I-”
“You’re lucky Dean didn’t hear that,” Sam said, and if he loomed a little more and his face became a little stonier, well. “No ninja in the world could save you.”
I wouldn’t, he added silently as the three of them reached the doors and discovered they were locked.
* * * * *
“Mom used to tell me a story,” he said, swinging the warming bottle of beer between his fingers as he felt the Impala’s body dip from added weight. “It was about a frog who always did the opposite of whatever his mother told him to do. She told him to put clothes on-”
“Frogs don’t wear clothing.”
“Not the point. She told him to go to the upper neighborhood and he went to the lower neighborhood. She told him to go to the hillside and he went down to the river. She told him not to play in the rain and he did just that. She scolded him for doing the exact opposite of what she said, and he laughed it off. He didn’t even croak like a real frog. She had to learn to tell him to do the exact opposite of what she wanted in order to get him to do exactly what she wanted.”
The angel’s confusion burned into the side of his head. Dean didn’t care if she had no idea why he was saying this; he kept going.
“Soon the stress of worrying over how to break his bad habits to make him like a normal frog got to her and she became very sick. She called him to her bedside and told him she didn’t have long to live. She asked him to bury her body down by the river, thinking he’d take her up to the mountains, like they used to.” He gestured emptily at that, because he didn’t know what it meant. “But this frog, he thought to himself, ‘I always did the opposite of what Mother tells me to do, and now I’ve made her worry herself to death. Oh my stupidity. From now on I’ll do everything she says.’”
“But didn’t she-”
“Who’s telling the story here?” Dean snapped. The angel didn’t flinch; she stared at him, so he coughed, face burning, and took another swig of the bitter beer. In a lower, more apologetic voice he continued, “Anyway, he took her body down to the riverbed and buried her there.”
“But that means the river could wash away her body,” Castiel interrupted. “He’ll never be able to tend to her continued well-being in the afterlife if there was no grave to tend to. He should’ve considered that before carrying out her last request.”
Dean stared at her; she matched it with unwavering eyes, dark and deep and as unfathomable as her mind.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “Something like that, I guess.”
Castiel nodded. She sat primly on the hood of the car, feet up on the bumper, hands folded over each other and resting in her lap. Then she leaned over, elbows sliding on her thighs, and she looked at him like that day after Halloween, when they sat at the park watching the kids climb all over the jungle gym. She had been a touch hesitant when she slowly but surely began relaying her doubts about her Father’s orders, and Dean suddenly wondered how she felt about this story.
“So what happened?” she asked.
“Uh…it began to rain and the river flooded. The frog couldn’t save the grave and it washed his mother away. He said…”
“‘What have I done? Of course she would tell me to bury her by the river; she thought I was going to do the exact opposite. And now she’s gone because I didn’t think it through. I am such a terrible son. Woe is me. Kaegul, kaegul!’ And that is why frogs cry whenever it rains.”
Dean laughed and shook his head. “Shitty pronunciation. She couldn’t even teach me basic Korean. Never had the chance…”
Castiel leaned over then, a tentatively outstretched hand reaching out and resting on his knee. Dean started, felt intense heat seep through the jeans, and suddenly remembered the hand print on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Castiel said.
He didn’t meet her eyes. “She told me the story a couple of times. One night I told her I would never do that. I was going to be the best son ever. You know what she said?”
“What did she tell you?”
“Do what you know is right, not what you’re told to do. But you know what? I did do that. I did whatever Dad told me to do because Mom was dead and I didn’t know what else to do. But when he told me that I had to kill Sam if he ever went dark side…I couldn’t do it. How could he ask that of me, huh? How was I supposed to put the gun on my own brother, my own family, my own flesh and blood?”
He took a deep breath and tipped the bottle. The beer splashed onto the asphalt and steam curled up. “Moral of the story-listen to your elders because they know what’s best for you. I do that my entire life and the one time I finally put my foot down we end up here. No closer to stopping that bitch Lilith, no closer to stopping those seals from breaking. Awesome.”
Castiel had tilted her head to watch the hot blacktop evaporate the beer, her face serene. He wondered about the questions she had for her Father, the doubts she held in her vessel’s slender body for the work she did.
The sun hit just the right angle as it sank below the horizon and a golden light flooded the motel parking lot, crowning her head in a halo. Highlights streaked her long dark hair and gave her vessel’s brown skin an amber cast. The smile on her face was small and incredibly beatific.
Castiel was sublime.
They said nothing else for another hour, just sat there with her staring at the ground and passing cars and him watching at her, looking for her wings as the sun sank behind the purple-blue mountains.
It was the most peaceful Dean ever felt.
Character art: Castiel.
Betas and readers: lizzy_someone, kaiserkuchen; dagnirovanaliel, koushirouhan, shakti9
Fandom Supernatural
Characters: biracial!Dean Winchester, biracial!Sam Winchester, black/female!Castiel, John Winchester, Bobby Singer, Jessica Moore, Cassie Robinson, Kat & Gavin, OCs; off screen: Mary Ahn Winchester
Rating: T
Word count: 3719
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary: Mary Ahn Winchester died on the ceiling of the nursery on November 2, 1983.
Author's Note: So! Since I’m still relatively new to LJ fandom this is the first summer I’m participating in (multi)fandom-wide ficathons and challenges.
dark_agenda’s Racebending Revenge Ficathon is the first of three this summer to go live. This is also the most powerful and meaningful challenge I’ve participated in because a lot of what’s in this fic is either very close to my heart or exaggerated examples of what the ethnicity/race I identify with go through on a daily basis. Biracial characters add more complexity to the story, and I’ve had the honor of having two biracial people (one is from the US, the other is not) beta this for me to make sure I didn’t screw it up too badly. If you have any questions, concerns, issues, whatever, please don’t be afraid to include it in the comments. I’d love to either explain why I did what I did or understand where I totally blew it.
By the way, the minimum word count was 500. I aimed for 600. That worked out well. And yes, the open-ended nature and the open threads of plot are there on purpose - I do want to return to this universe in the near future.
The creature that walked through the doors was human. Woman-shaped, despite the long beige trench coat swaying around it-her legs. She was tall, slender, and utterly unperturbed by the showers of sparks overhead or the bullets Dean and Bobby kept firing.
Her heart-shaped face turned to Dean when he grabbed Ruby’s knife. He swallowed hard; her eyes could burn.
“Who are you?” he demanded. All those sigils, all that rock salt and consecrated bullets, and she still stood there, was in fact stepping close to him, tilting her head up as she spoke.
“I’m the one who gripped you tight and pulled you from Perdition.”
Perdition? Hell? He gripped the knife, knowing full well that if this knife did nothing then this creature that wore such a beautiful, terrible face was too powerful for them to handle.
“Yeah, thanks for that,” he said, empty bravado in his words as he stabbed her heart.
She stared at the knife, gave him a look that read “You really think that’s going to stop me?”, grasped the handle, and pulled it out. She didn’t even look when Bobby launched an attack; she grabbed the crowbar, swung him around until they were facing each other, and she pressed two fingertips to his forehead. Bobby crumpled to the floor.
“We need to talk,” she said, stepping over his body. “Alone.”
* * * * *
Hunters never gave a shit who was stuck in the foxhole with them. All that mattered was that she could shoot a gun.
That didn’t mean that they wouldn’t give you a second look or add double the holy water in your whiskey.
He hated it. He hated it as much as he hated the bastard who took their mother and their lives away one cold November night. They were saving people, hunting things, carrying on what he called “the family business” and nobody gave them the respect and dignity they deserved.
The worst part? He had no one to talk to about it. He spent days on the road with just the Impala’s purr and Led Zeppelin shredding his eardrums to make up for it. He fought harder-in graveyards and at the bar-and fucked harder-because he was taking advantage of his looks, no matter what they said about it-to make it all go away.
It never did, and nobody was there to hear him scream.
* * * * *
“If anyone makes fun of you,” John told eight-year-old Dean sternly as they stood outside the brick building, “you deck ‘em. You understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
Dean got sent home that afternoon. His knuckles had disappeared under the Sesame Street bandages and he had a black eye.
“Maybe after a week,” John said after he finished reprimanding him. Sam sat on the bed, a giant coloring book on his lap. He hadn’t colored since Dean came back to the motel room.
“They were making squinty eyes at me,” Dean said. “I didn’t like it. And why do they keep saying ‘ching chong chang’?”
John stilled, the alcohol pad pressing down hard on the scrape over his middle knuckle. Dean tried not to squirm as it burned. Then John let his hand go and knelt down in front of him. Dean stared back, stunned by the anger in his father’s green eyes.
“Tomorrow,” he said slowly, “I’m going to school with you and we’re talking to your teacher. You’re right not to like it. You can’t help who you are and nobody should make fun of you for it.”
Dean nodded once, tongue-tied by his father’s intensity. John then smiled and pulled him into a hug.
“I want a hug, too!” Sam called out from the bed. “Why are we hugging?”
“Because your brother’s very brave,” John said, talking to the tiles in the shower stall. His voice bounced around the bathroom and then out into the motel room. “He’s going to look after you just like I look after him. We look after each other, and nobody makes fun of us. They have no right. You understand?”
Dean stared out to Sam, who looked a touch confused but determined to understand nonetheless.
I’m looking after you, Dean thought. No matter what.
* * * * *
“You have a cultural heritage that not a lot of people can claim,” she said. “You should own it.”
Dean snorted as he picked up the double shot glass. “Lost all chance of that when Mom died,” he said bitterly and Cassie’s face softened with sympathy.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t-”
He shrugged. “It’s in the past.”
He didn’t miss the sadness in her eyes as he knocked back the whiskey.
* * * * *
“You should be a model,” one of the girls-Esther Chen, maybe?-said one day. Sam tried not to squirm under the scrutiny as the others giggled.
“Thanks,” he muttered, ears burning as he glued his face to the book. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should,” Esther said. “You’re way too hot to be a lawyer. Or a doctor. Can you sing?”
“Can I…?” Sam stared at them, jaw unhinged. Sing? No, he can’t sing. He’d been officially banned from singing whenever they went out to karaoke. “No. Why?”
“You’d make a superstar over there. Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand,” Rebecca Kim said, glancing up from her textbook. “Well, if you can’t sing can you act? I bet you can. You’d make such a hot actor. Or a model. Chicks dig hot models, especially mixed ones.”
Sam wanted to crawl under the carpet.
* * * * *
Once Dean felt like eating spaghetti and was spinning the fork in the marinara-coated noodles when a group of men walked by and bumped into him. It felt like they were trying to shove his face into the plate and Dean whirled around.
“Hey, watch it! People are trying to eat here.”
“Whatever, Jap,” one of the men laughed.
“Where’s your chopsticks, huh? How do you work those things anyway?” someone else asked loudly.
“Bring me some and you’ll find out,” Dean growled. He didn’t know how to use chopsticks and wished people would just shut the fuck up about it. He did, however, know how to use two flimsy sticks to inflict the worst pain imaginable to man, and don’t even get him started on the monsters.
* * * * *
“You have any pictures of your mom?” Jessica asked, or at least that’s what he thought she asked but with his head caught in the sweater he couldn’t tell.
“What?” he asked, freeing himself and tossing the sweater on the bed.
“Your mom,” she said. “Do you have pictures of your mom?”
He hesitated, and then wondered where his wallet was. He glanced at his desk and suddenly realized he didn’t have pictures of Dean or their father either.
“I, uh…”
Jessica leaned against the table, arms folded, and stared at him. Sam fidgeted, and then sighed. “Just one. I think it was my dad’s.”
He grabbed his backpack and rooted in it for his wallet. Fingertips found worn leather-it was Dean’s, and before Dean’s it was John’s, and it filled him with memories of their life on the road, of the vengeful spirits and monsters crawling through windows and hiding in attics, John’s looming presence as he told off Randy’s father before dragging them away to shout about starting fights and distracting him away from the werewolf’s tracks-
“Hey, you okay?”
Sam looked up at her, the keen worry in her bright blue eyes, and shook his head. “Sorry, lost track. Here,” and he pulled out the wallet. Mary’s picture was tucked in behind the various IDs Jessica needed not to see so he covered them with his fingers while sliding her picture out with his thumb.
“Oh,” Jessica said softly. “She’s beautiful.”
“That’s what Dean always told me,” Sam said.
She frowned. “What happened to her?”
Something killed her and broke our family. “Fire in the nursery. She didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said, wrapping her arms around him. “So sorry…”
He breathed in the berry scent in her long blonde hair and then turned his head to stare at the photo in her hand, young Mary Ahn with her arms around her fiancé.
* * * * *
Sam did know how to use chopsticks. His friends at Stanford taught him after he revealed he didn’t know how to.
“It was at Panda Express,” Sam explained, working the top stick between his thumb and his index and middle fingers with finesse. Dean tried to not scowl as he stared at them. “Couldn’t hide it forever, not from these guys. It was going to catch up one way or another, so I asked. They made fun of me at first-” And here Dean bristled so Sam changed his tone. “They were teasing, man; they didn’t mean it. I’m not the only half-white kid on campus.”
It didn’t matter. He’d gotten sick of being teased since that first day in school years ago. “You made sure of it?”
Sam smiled with knowing and nostalgia, and Dean averted his eyes, staring down at the sticky orange chicken in the cardboard box.
“Of course. After I managed to pick up the tofu without splitting it in two they said, ‘One of us, one of us,’ and bought some…was it soju? Sake? Can’t remember.”
“Did it taste good?” Dean asked, prodding a piece of chicken with his fork. He’d seen the little frosted bottles every now and then, sometimes stared at the labels like the curvy brush calligraphy would decipher life’s mysteries for him. Then he’d grab a case of Sam Adams and leave.
“You could just ask, you know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He could hear Sam rolling his eyes as he leaned over and grabbed a pair of chopsticks from the plastic bag that proudly said “PANDA EXPRESS”.
“Here, let me show you…”
* * * * *
Dean fell in love with Cassie because she saw what lay underneath his bravado and understood his anger better than anyone ever did. He could have stayed with Lisa, with Ryan, with Maggie, but he didn’t. It was Cassie, and he didn’t know why until he did.
“If you need to talk to someone,” she told him early into their relationship, “talk to me. I’ll listen when nobody else will.”
She dumped him when he told her the truth of his mother’s death and what he really did for a living.
Dean had to stop a mile out from Cape Giradeau to laugh at his sorry state, and then cry because he was alone again.
Until he found Sam.
Until Castiel dragged him out of Hell.
* * * * *
“Why can’t we call the cops?”
Sam braced himself. Dean was always the better of the two at keeping his temper in check - meaning he held it in and pretended nothing’s wrong - but few things set him off in a way that they never did for Sam. Unfortunately, this question was one of them.
“Because they do shit all,” Dean said, his voice as stiff as his shoulders as he checked their supply of rounds.
Sam quickly cut in. “They don’t know how to handle cases like this,” he explained. “The police doesn’t know what’s out there, where to look, how to fight them off-”
“Cops,” Dean interrupted, “don’t give a shit. Never did, never will.”
The college student who never meant to move into an apartment complex infested with gremlins, whirled on him. “Hey, don’t you go disrespecting the police. They do good work. They put their lives on the line so the rest of us can sleep easy at night-”
“Oh yeah? You ever pay attention to the news? All those beatings, all the sloppy follow-ups, Rodney King? You wanna know where jokes about being black while driving fancy cars came from? You wanna know why the cops did shit all after our mom died?”
Sam grabbed the shotgun he’d been loading. “Dean, don’t-”
“Mary Ahn Winchester was Korean. She was Asian, she was yellow, she wasn’t white. Dad insisted something killed her that night and the cops ignored him. Didn’t listen to him. Didn’t care that it wasn’t an electrical fire that left us homeless, that ruined our family forever. If the dead body’s not white why should they care? Why should they listen?”
The student started as her back hit the wall. Her eyes were wide and terrified, and Sam knew that was enough.
“Let it go,” he said. “We’re not here for this. Let’s take care of gremlins first.”
Dean breathed heavily out of his nose, then turned away. “Fine. Wanted to shoot some suckers anyway.”
Sam waited until he was in the other room, shoving hex bags into the room, and then said, “I’m sorry. He’s…really sensitive-”
“I should apologize,” she said shakily, tucking loose strands of hair behind her ear as she stared at the open duffel bag on the dining table. “I didn’t mean…I didn’t know. I mean, I knew that you weren’t…that you were…mixed. Biracial. I just didn’t…think about-”
“You didn’t know. You couldn’t have. We’re here to save you and the other tenants, not share life stories.”
The college student nodded slowly. “Then…did you ever find out what killed your mom?”
Yellow eyes flashed through his memory from the dark crevices where they still haunted him. He thought that with the yellow-eyed demon dead they could move on, live free of his influence, but no, Dean was going to Hell in a few months and Sam was no closer to finding a way to save him. The demon was still breaking his family apart.
“Yeah. We did.”
* * * * *
“We…could take you to a male strip club,” Dean said, fumbling for words while Castiel watched him impassively. He tried not think about the holy vinaigrette in the clay jug next to her arm, or what she’s about to do tomorrow. “Or a female one? How do you swing?”
“I don’t swing. I simply am,” she said, raising her arms and resting them on the table, long fingers lacing together. “I appreciate your concern, Dean, but I am still an angel. I do not require sustenance or sleep or…bodily pleasures.”
He couldn’t tell if this embarrassed her or if she simply didn’t want to talk about it. He leaned over the chair, peering at her face. Not surprisingly she matched his gaze and then tilted her chin up. He stared at her mouth, and then down her slender throat to the collar of her dress shirt.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He coughed and looked away, then pulled out the other chair. He didn’t sit down, though. Instead he stared out through the dusty blinds at the Impala sitting at the curb. “Fine. So what, we’re going to sit here quietly until morning?”
She leveled him with a glare. “You can do whatever you want.”
“No way, man,” Dean said, shaking his head. “I’m not leaving you here while I have fun. You know what, we’re doing shots.” He pulled his jacket off the back of the chair and shrugged it on. “And if you want to pick someone up, well, be my guest. Come on, let’s go.”
* * * * *
“You guys do this for a living?” Kat asked while they loaded their shotguns.
“Yep,” Sam said.
“It’s kind of our job,” Dean added. He elbowed Sam and pointed down the hall. Sam nodded and made a gesture to Kat and Gavin to start walking in the opposite direction.
“Why would anyone want this for a job?” she asked, looking over her shoulder as Dean disappeared around the corner.
“I had a crappy guidance counselor,” Sam said.
Gavin looked a little put out. “And you do this with guns? No magic? No freaky ninja moves-”
“Gavin!” she snapped. Then, “You can’t do ninja moves on something you can’t hit!” And, “That’s offensive!”
“What? What did I-”
“You’re lucky Dean didn’t hear that,” Sam said, and if he loomed a little more and his face became a little stonier, well. “No ninja in the world could save you.”
I wouldn’t, he added silently as the three of them reached the doors and discovered they were locked.
* * * * *
“Mom used to tell me a story,” he said, swinging the warming bottle of beer between his fingers as he felt the Impala’s body dip from added weight. “It was about a frog who always did the opposite of whatever his mother told him to do. She told him to put clothes on-”
“Frogs don’t wear clothing.”
“Not the point. She told him to go to the upper neighborhood and he went to the lower neighborhood. She told him to go to the hillside and he went down to the river. She told him not to play in the rain and he did just that. She scolded him for doing the exact opposite of what she said, and he laughed it off. He didn’t even croak like a real frog. She had to learn to tell him to do the exact opposite of what she wanted in order to get him to do exactly what she wanted.”
The angel’s confusion burned into the side of his head. Dean didn’t care if she had no idea why he was saying this; he kept going.
“Soon the stress of worrying over how to break his bad habits to make him like a normal frog got to her and she became very sick. She called him to her bedside and told him she didn’t have long to live. She asked him to bury her body down by the river, thinking he’d take her up to the mountains, like they used to.” He gestured emptily at that, because he didn’t know what it meant. “But this frog, he thought to himself, ‘I always did the opposite of what Mother tells me to do, and now I’ve made her worry herself to death. Oh my stupidity. From now on I’ll do everything she says.’”
“But didn’t she-”
“Who’s telling the story here?” Dean snapped. The angel didn’t flinch; she stared at him, so he coughed, face burning, and took another swig of the bitter beer. In a lower, more apologetic voice he continued, “Anyway, he took her body down to the riverbed and buried her there.”
“But that means the river could wash away her body,” Castiel interrupted. “He’ll never be able to tend to her continued well-being in the afterlife if there was no grave to tend to. He should’ve considered that before carrying out her last request.”
Dean stared at her; she matched it with unwavering eyes, dark and deep and as unfathomable as her mind.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “Something like that, I guess.”
Castiel nodded. She sat primly on the hood of the car, feet up on the bumper, hands folded over each other and resting in her lap. Then she leaned over, elbows sliding on her thighs, and she looked at him like that day after Halloween, when they sat at the park watching the kids climb all over the jungle gym. She had been a touch hesitant when she slowly but surely began relaying her doubts about her Father’s orders, and Dean suddenly wondered how she felt about this story.
“So what happened?” she asked.
“Uh…it began to rain and the river flooded. The frog couldn’t save the grave and it washed his mother away. He said…”
“‘What have I done? Of course she would tell me to bury her by the river; she thought I was going to do the exact opposite. And now she’s gone because I didn’t think it through. I am such a terrible son. Woe is me. Kaegul, kaegul!’ And that is why frogs cry whenever it rains.”
Dean laughed and shook his head. “Shitty pronunciation. She couldn’t even teach me basic Korean. Never had the chance…”
Castiel leaned over then, a tentatively outstretched hand reaching out and resting on his knee. Dean started, felt intense heat seep through the jeans, and suddenly remembered the hand print on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Castiel said.
He didn’t meet her eyes. “She told me the story a couple of times. One night I told her I would never do that. I was going to be the best son ever. You know what she said?”
“What did she tell you?”
“Do what you know is right, not what you’re told to do. But you know what? I did do that. I did whatever Dad told me to do because Mom was dead and I didn’t know what else to do. But when he told me that I had to kill Sam if he ever went dark side…I couldn’t do it. How could he ask that of me, huh? How was I supposed to put the gun on my own brother, my own family, my own flesh and blood?”
He took a deep breath and tipped the bottle. The beer splashed onto the asphalt and steam curled up. “Moral of the story-listen to your elders because they know what’s best for you. I do that my entire life and the one time I finally put my foot down we end up here. No closer to stopping that bitch Lilith, no closer to stopping those seals from breaking. Awesome.”
Castiel had tilted her head to watch the hot blacktop evaporate the beer, her face serene. He wondered about the questions she had for her Father, the doubts she held in her vessel’s slender body for the work she did.
The sun hit just the right angle as it sank below the horizon and a golden light flooded the motel parking lot, crowning her head in a halo. Highlights streaked her long dark hair and gave her vessel’s brown skin an amber cast. The smile on her face was small and incredibly beatific.
Castiel was sublime.
They said nothing else for another hour, just sat there with her staring at the ground and passing cars and him watching at her, looking for her wings as the sun sank behind the purple-blue mountains.
It was the most peaceful Dean ever felt.
Character art: Castiel.
