Legacy, for counteragent, 2/2
PART 2
Sam was trying very hard not to panic. But Dean had been unconscious for two days now, not stirring a muscle since Sam had found him collapsed outside one of the Bunker’s many small storerooms. Weirdly, Dean’s boots and socks had been missing, nowhere to be found - something Dean was going to be mighty pissed about when he woke. He loved those boots.
After Sam failed to rouse Dean, he’d struggled to carry the heavy great lump that was his big brother back to Dean’s own room, where he deposited him onto that beloved memory foam mattress. Sam hadn’t been running at full strength since starting the trials, and he felt its lack now. He was worn to a frazzle with waiting.
Two days.
In fact, it was forty-nine hours and … Sam glanced at his watch again …fifteen minutes. Not that Sam was counting. But. He wanted his brother back.
Two days ago, Sam had searched the room Dean had been working in from top to bottom, thinking Dean must have touched or opened something he shouldn’t have. Maybe even eaten something. He wouldn’t put it past him, having watched Dean opening boxes of occult artefacts seemingly unable to stop handling and even sniffing things. It reminded him of Benton Fraser from Due South, a thought that had made him giggle at the time, even while he’d been telling Dean not to be so fucking stupid. But there was nothing in the storeroom in question but a few shelves stacked with boxes of manila folders, containing records of the Men of Letters. One box had been relatively clear of dust, evidence that it had been opened recently, and Sam had that one on the floor next to him now, where he was sitting at Dean’s bedside, waiting for Dean to wake up already.
He had already been through every line in every single one of the files in the box, and there was nothing there. Not a single clue as to why his brother had been lying comatose for …forty-nine hours and forty-three minutes… as pale as the sheets he was lying on. When Sam had first seen their grandfather’s file was in there, his hopes had soared, but there was nothing of interest in that slender folder, and nothing to indicate that it had anything to do with Dean’s mysterious condition. All the other files were equally unforthcoming. He’d even called Kevin once, to see if any sort of relevant revelation had been forthcoming from the tablet research, only to have his ear chewed off by an extremely stressed Prophet, who had evidently been taking the uppers that Dean had stupidly left him and was consequently wired so tight he was practically vibrating at a high C.
Sam had been living with nothing but onlys and ifs and buts for forty-nine hours and fifty minutes and he was tired of it.
It was fortunate that Dean chose that moment to wake up, as Sam was reaching the end of his rope. His brother’s first mumbled utterances were predictable, if infuriatingly Dean.
“S’m.” Dean’s eyes opened a little wider, took in Sam’s haggard face. “”R y’okay?”
Sam’s reaction was also predictable and probably very Sam. He wavered wildly between wanting to hug Dean until he squeaked, or shake his stupid brother until his teeth fell out. Caught between the two options, he did neither, just sat and glared at Dean, who didn’t seem to notice.
“Wha’ happened?” Dean asked, as he tried and failed to sit up. He fell back onto his pillow with a loud oof! “Why do I feel like crap?”
Sam turned his glare up a notch.
“I thought you might tell me, Dean. I found you unconscious outside one of the storerooms; not a mark on you, but I couldn’t wake you up. That was two days ago, Dean. Two days.” Sam’s voice was getting a bit shrill, and the memory of those two days made him feel a little out of control, so he shut up abruptly before he embarrassed himself. Dean was staring at him, a patented big-brother concerned expression on his pallid face and that was just too fucking annoying for words. How dare Dean worry about Sam when he was the one who’d been unconscious for days. Freaking days!
“Hey, Sammy, it’s okay,” Dean was murmuring into his ear and somehow Dean had wrapped sleep-warm arms around Sam, who was shaking with the strength of his emotions and was now worried perhaps he might have just said all of that stupid crap out loud. So Sam shut his mouth tight to keep his words inside, and hugged Dean back until Dean squeaked, which proved that was the option he should have gone with in the first place. He only let go, reluctantly, when Dean beat feebly on his back and said something about suffocation.
“That box…” Dean’s brow furrowed as his gaze fell on the cardboard box full of useless files, then a look of recognition flashed across his face. “Gerry O’Hara!” Dean exclaimed, inexplicably, and this time he must have found the strength from somewhere, because he was out of the bed and crossing the room before Sam had a chance to react. Only to land in an untidy heap on the floor halfway to the box when his wobbly legs gave out. An echo of Bobby muttered idjit inside Sam’s head.
He helped Dean up patiently while pointing out the obvious fact that Dean had a) been unconscious for two days and b) not eaten or drunk anything for all that time regardless of whatever else might be wrong with him, and that therefore leaping out of bed and rushing about was probably not the wisest course of action. He deposited a pale, grumbling Dean back into the bed and left with a promise that he would dig out the relevant file once Dean had eaten the soup he’d had on the go for the last fifty hours and twenty minutes. Oh and after Dean had showered too, because he stank. Dean sniffed gingerly at one armpit, winced, then pretended he hadn’t. He attempted an unconvincing smirk instead.
“What do you mean I stink? Didn’t you give me any bed baths while I was out, Sammy? You know I’d have done it for you, little brother…”
Sam smiled as Dean’s protests followed him down the corridor to the kitchen.
0x0x0x0
Sam refused to allow Dean to either touch the mysterious O’Hara file, or even to talk about it until he’d downed two bowlfuls of the well-stewed broth, and there was a bit of color back in his freckled cheeks. Finally satisfied, Sam sat back and handed Dean the slim manila folder. There was silence except for the rustle of pages turning and the occasional hum from Dean when he read something particularly interesting. After a few minutes of this, Sam’s patience cracked.
“Ok, are you going to tell me what happened? And why are you so interested in this file?”
Dean flashed him a surprised look as if he’d forgotten Sam was there, which was disturbing. Though Sam never articulated it, even to himself, but it was ingrained deeply into his psyche that Dean’s attention would always be partly focused on him, so to have his brother so concentrated on something else was a little weird.
Then Dean began to tell him about Gerry O’Hara, and Sam forgot about everything else.
When Dean had told him everything he knew, Sam felt dizzy. Dean had kicked the beehive, and now there were so many thoughts buzzing inside Sam’s head it was hard to single out the patterns and see the paths that mattered. But Sam was good at this, he would figure it all out.
“She could still be alive.”
Sam didn’t know which of them said it, but it was true. Their grandmother, the last surviving member of the Winchester family tree, albeit by marriage, and the last of the Men of Letters could still be alive somewhere. They had no evidence of her death, and some research was definitely in order. Sam smiled. Now this was his forte.
It took Sam a while, and he had to employ some of the hacking skills Charlie had taught him before he finally tracked their grandmother down, but there she was. Still going by the name of O’Hara, so evidently she hadn’t married again, 80 year old Geraldine was living near the coast of Maine, in a small town called Harrington, not many miles south of the Canadian border. It looked like she’d been there a long time, maybe ever since she’d talked to Dean, back in April 1958, though Sam couldn’t find an actual record of her arrival there.
Dean was still weak from the aftermath of whatever the mystery illness was that had hit him - time travel sickness? - but now above all he was furious, and running off the fumes of that anger he wanted to set out for Maine right away.
“She knew what was going to happen, Sammy. I fucking told her! And all she did with that knowledge was abandon Henry and Dad. She left Henry alone to face Abaddon, and Dad without a Mom. How could she do that?”
“I don’t know, dude, we can ask her when we get there. But it’s a two day drive, you're swaying on your feet, and I’m not exactly firing on all cylinders myself right now, so you're going to have to be patient.”
Dean grumbled and bitched and stomped around like a sulky toddler until he got tired and had to sit down, but Sam knew he was right and wouldn’t give way until Dean finally agreed to wait until the following day.
Dean woke Sam at the crack of dawn, but Sam still counted that as a win, especially as his brother looked a million times better after a good night’s sleep. And, Sam admitted to himself, he was just as eager to meet Geraldine as Dean was, maybe more so, as she was the only fully initiated member of the Men of Letters he was ever going to have a chance to talk to, now that Larry was well and truly dead.
Sam managed to pry the wheel of the Impala from Dean’s hand a couple of times to share the drive east, through weather that was as unsettled as Dean’s temper.
Harrington, Maine was one of those towns without a real centre. An oddball assortment of houses and industrial units were interspersed with a Subway, a Seven Eleven and a late 18th century Methodist church. The place felt like it had grown organically along the highway where it meandered around the strangely named Back Bay, Flat Bay and West Carrying Place Cove. It made it almost impossible to get lost, not that Dean was prone to losing his way. Sam would swear his brother had a GPS wired into his brain. One glance at a map and Dean could navigate as if it was on a display etched into the Impala’s windshield in front of his face.
The setting sun was shafting watery gold through lowering rain clouds behind them as the Impala rumbled her way to a halt outside the tiny single story clapboard house on Cherryfield Stretch.
It looked exactly as it had done on the satellite street view Sam had called up before they left the Bat Cave. It was the sort of house a kid would draw. The central front door was flanked by pairs of windows with ornamental burnt orange shutters, like eyes round a nose; there was a shingle roof with a tall central chimney, and a small outhouse built onto the side. The fence was made of round logs rather than white pickets, and there was an ancient but well kept motorbike in the front garden under the huge beech tree, but otherwise it was pretty as a picture on a chocolate box.
Dean huffed a bit when Sam pointed out that the Impala was likely to draw a lot of attention parked up on the road, but he followed Sam’s directions and reversed into the driveway down the side of the house. Though it didn’t stop him mumbling something about holding Sam personally accountable if that damn tree dropped sap or any other crap onto his baby’s paintwork.
“I wish you’d let me find out her phone number and call ahead, Dean. She’s an old lady, and two big guys turning up out of the blue…”
“And give her a chance to skip town? I don’t think so, Sam.”
“Dude, she’s eighty years old, I very much doubt she’ll be skipping anywhere any time soon.”
“Yeah well, we’ll see.”
Dean’s knock on the partition door was aggressively loud, making Sam wince. Geraldine didn’t keep them waiting long. Sam’s first impression was that their grandmother was pretty spry for eighty. She was also tiny, perfectly in proportion with her tiny house. With her white hair and slanted eyes she reminded Sam of a Persian cat.
He didn’t know what he was expecting, but having her instantly recognise Dean and literally drag them both inside was not it.
“Dean Winchester. And you must be Sam. My, you are tall. And handsome.” She reached up and touched Sam’s cheek with a smile before rounding on Dean. “What took you so long, boy?”
Sam was amused to see Dean’s carefully nurtured anger melt under their grandmother’s scrutiny. Dean deflated like a failed soufflé and began to bluster as she ushered them through to the sitting room. Sam wasn’t sure how he felt about this new relative (yet another new relative, how could their family be so freaking good at hiding from each other?), but it was clear that Dean was wound up tight as a drum-skin, so the merest tap had him vibrating. The only question was, where was all that tension going to lead?
Geraldine’s place was almost as small as that mobile home the crazy fairy woman had lived in, but thankfully all resemblance ended there. The décor was tastefully plain and there wasn’t a lace doily or antimacassar in sight. Even better, Geraldine offered coffee, not tea, and it came in decent-sized mugs that Sam could wrap his hand around without feeling like Gulliver in Lilliput.
Once everyone was settled, Geraldine rounded on Dean.
“So you only returned from 1958 four days ago? That is ridiculous. I’ve been waiting for over fifty years, and you didn’t even bring your father with you. Where is John? Where’s my baby boy?”
Dean’s face was stricken, so Sam stepped in.
“Dad - John Winchester, your son - died in 2006.” Sam threw Dean a glance that said you didn’t tell her this fact back then? But Dean’s gaze was fixed firmly on his second best boots to avoid seeing how their grandmother paled, and sat back in the armchair as if gravity had suddenly increased to unbearable proportions.
“I’m sorry.” Sam added.
Geraldine was silent for a moment and Sam didn’t know whether to keep talking or give her a moment. Fortunately, she didn’t keep him waiting long. She sighed and leaned forward, that piercing gaze fixed on Dean.
“So John was already dead when we spoke back in ‘58. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Dean’s head went up at that, and when he spoke Sam was glad he couldn’t see his brother’s expression, if it was half as raw as his voice.
“I gave you all the information you needed to save Henry and the Men of Letters from Abaddon. Telling you about Dad, it wouldn’t have helped you back then, and it might have distracted you. But then I arrive back to find nothing changed, and you were just as AWOL as you had been before we spoke. We’d thought you were dead. Dad thought you were dead. What happened?”
It appeared at first that Geraldine wasn’t going to answer Dean, as she started talking about the Men of Letters in a seemingly general way.
“You have to understand, the Men of Letters were not warriors. There were never very many of us, no more than a handful of initiates and Elders active at any one time, and we were all scholars, not soldiers.
After I sent you back, Dean, I thought about what you had told me for a long time. I sought counsel from David Ackers, as our most senior Elder. He didn’t believe me. None of them believed me. Time travel, Knights of Hell, none of it. After the third, the fourth retelling, I started doubting myself. David forbade me from telling Henry. He said that even if it was true, then I couldn’t upset the natural balance by trying to change the past, and I had to agree. I remembered what you’d said when I asked you about your own experiences of trying to meddle with past events.”
Dean shifted in his chair and looked guilty, but Geraldine continued, ignoring his discomfort.
“Then I did some research of my own and I found Abaddon. Well, not Abaddon itself, not exactly, but evidence that the demon might indeed exist on our plane. I found a trail of suspicious deaths, and eventually I concluded Abaddon was systematically eliminating Men of Letters. Some of them had been tortured before they died, and from what you’d said, Dean, I figured the demon was seeking the key to the Knowledge.
I knew two things: the key had to be protected, and you’d told me my Henry was going to do that. And that meant it was up to me to protect our baby, John. I was consumed with the fear of knowing that Abaddon was coming for all of us, all the Men of Letters, and from what you described, the demon wasn’t going to stop until everyone if us was dead. So.”
“So, John couldn’t become a Man of Letters?” Sam interjected when Geraldine hesitated.
Geraldine looked at him in surprise, as if she had forgotten Sam was there. She nodded in approval, and when she resumed her tale, her attention was directed at both Winchesters.
“That’s right. I couldn’t allow John to become the Legacy he was born to be, because that would set him up as Abaddon’s next target. So I went to Kansas, hoping that I would have enough time to make arrangements before the demon arrived and the events Dean had described came to pass.”
“You found a family to foster our Dad.” Sam stated. He could see the logic of the abandonment to come; he understood the strategy of hiding from the ones you love the most to protect them from pain. Geraldine nodded.
“They were family, Henry’s cousins. Civilians. George Winchester was a car mechanic, Miriam waited tables at the local diner. They didn’t know anything about the Knowledge or the legacy.”
“Or hunting,” Dean said, and Sam could see the anger had returned. “You left him vulnerable, knowing what was out there. How could you do that?”
Geraldine didn’t have to answer him though, because Sam could see the pattern now. Sam spoke up before Geraldine could get a word out.
“Because the Campbells were there. A family of hunters, the best in the business. If any town should be safe, it would be Lawrence, Kansas. Right?”
Dean was looking from one to the other of them with a kind of horror on his face. It made Sam uncomfortable, but he couldn’t help it. Dean wouldn’t see the choice their grandmother had made as a valid option, because to Dean, family was all about sticking together, no matter what. Although his brother was far more astute than he gave himself credit for, this was one area where he was wilfully blind, and Sam understood it. Understood but didn’t always agree. So Sam didn’t try and stop Dean when he stood up and walked out of the house. He might have briefly entertained the idea of whacking Dean upside the head for being such a stubborn, sensitive ass, but that was only a fleeting thought.
Dean paused at the door on his way out, and his expression was an odd mixture of apology and bewildered anger.
“If you knew what your decision cost; I…I’m sorry, I just can’t …” He said, then he was gone.
Geraldine stared after him for a moment, her expression unreadable, before turning back to Sam.
“Shouldn’t you go with him, make sure he’s all right?”
Sam shook his head. “Dean’s fine. He just needs a minute or two to get his head around all this. He’ll probably go drive around for a bit, but he’ll be back.”
Geraldine sighed, then nodded in acquiescence.
“I know what my decision cost me,” she said. “Perhaps you can explain what price other people paid for it?”
“I can,” Sam said, “But it is a very long story. And I have questions for you too, if you don’t mind.”
Geraldine nodded and rose to her feet. “Long stories call for coffee and cake, I think.”
“Dean prefers pie,” Sam said with a grin. After a second, Geraldine’s tight expression loosened into a smile that was an echo of Sam’s own.
“Pie it is, then.”
Once they were settled back down in the living room with ample supplies, Geraldine went first in the sharing of their disparate Winchester histories.
0x0x0x0
After Dean had disappeared back into her future, Geraldine wasted no time.
Her first step was to warn her colleagues about Abaddon. Even though Dean had told her one version of history as he had experienced it, she knew that just because something had apparently happened, didn’t mean it was inevitable it would always happen. The events Dean had described were his past, and so fixed for him, but they were still in her future, and the future was fluid. Time paradoxes. Gotta love 'em. If there was a chance the future could be changed, she had to take it.
So she tried to convince them that she wasn’t insane, she hadn’t been dreaming or somehow contaminated by one of the many dangerous artifacts they studied in the Bunker, or that she hadn’t simply been taken for a ride by a handsome, devious stranger. They didn’t believe her. At first they were angry that she apparently allowed the mysterious intruder to escape, but after a while, she could see the anger turning to concern mixed with a hint of condescension. She wasn’t surprised when eventually David Ackers told her that it was time to go home to Indiana, clearly hoping that Henry would be able to sort his hysterical wife out.
Part of her wanted that so much it hurt. To see Henry again, let him hold her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right. To kiss John goodnight, and sing As Time Goes By to him while he fell asleep, with his dark hair sleep tousled and a rosy glow on his cheeks. To explain why she had to leave them.
It was getting close to the time when Henry would be going through his initiation, and all the Elders would be returning to their base in Normal to perform the ceremony. Geraldine knew Abaddon would be waiting for them there, so her time was running out. But there was one last thing she needed to put in place before she could leave this last stronghold of the Men of Letters.
She didn’t want to deceive her colleagues, but neither did she want to risk anyone trying to stop her setting up the mechanisms by which she planned to ensure that Dean would travel back here when the time came. She played the meek woman for them and was somewhat disappointed that they swallowed it. Geraldine had thought her male colleagues were better than that. So she told them it was a long drive, she would leave first thing in the morning, and then she waited for night to fall and the three men to go to their rooms to sleep.
Geraldine waited for the quality of the Bunker’s quiet to change to dormant before running back to the bedroom where Dean had lain unconscious, to grab the boots he’d involuntarily left behind.
All the while Dean had been telling her his story, her mind had been racing. Consequences and actions, actions and reactions, Newton’s Laws of motion. She was well educated, better than most women of the time, one of the many advantages of being brought up as a Legacy, and she understood what she was doing would not be easy. She thought about John, her baby boy, safely tucked up in bed at home with her husband, soon to become a fully-fledged Man of Letters, and she steeled herself. This would hurt them, and it would nigh on kill her, but it had to be done if any of them was to have a chance of surviving.
She took Dean’s (her grandson, her mind still couldn’t wrap around that fact) well worn, heavy boots, and with a sharp knife, began to cut the leather into strips. She made sure the parts she chose were the most worn, ones still holding the imprint of her grandson’s feet. She painted each piece of leather with her own blood. Then, taking the dismembered boots, she worked at the wooden doorframe to remove the strips of wood in order to carefully conceal the fragments of leather around the doorway. She etched symbols, Enochian and arcane, into the rough undersides of the wood before putting the pieces back in place. It was important to get this done swiftly, quietly and with the greatest care. This contrivance had to last for more than fifty years, so that the spell would still work when Dean walked through this same doorway in these same boots, at some point in the future. The paradox would be triggered, and blood would call to blood.
Geraldine wished she’d had the time to ask Dean so many more questions, including finding out precisely from when it was that he’d travelled back in time to meet her, but it was too late for that now. She would just have to trust that kind of precision was not a requirement to make this spell work, taking Dean’s appearance a few hours ago as hopeful evidence of success. Even though she knew that what she was planning to do now could be setting up a new paradox that would mean that Dean would never arrive in the past in the first place. She couldn’t think about that, or she would be paralyzed into inaction.
It’s only after the spell was all complete and the time trap set - with a double trigger so that Dean would have to walk through twice for it to activate, because Geraldine didn’t want this thing to go off by accident - everything hit her like a tidal wave and she had to sit down before her trembling legs folded from underneath her.
The dead of night hush that surrounded the Bunker in the small hours pressed on her so that she bowed under its weight, and her whole body shook. What was she doing? If Dean had been right, she had no guarantee that any of them would survive, let alone that her plan could work. Though her son had survived, hadn’t he? And become a hunter and a father, and perhaps that was due to the actions she was putting in place now. She had to hope so, because hope was all she had to go on.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there before she finally managed to pull it together and find the will to move. There was one last task to complete before she could leave the Bunker for good, a few more minutes and she was done. She put the typewriter away and slid the brown manila folder back into the box. She stood for a moment with her hand resting on the black Bakelite of the telephone, thinking about Henry. Then she shook her head.
No. If she told Henry what she was doing, he might do something different when the day of his initiation came, and then Dean may not have the chance to come back and warn her. She couldn’t chance it, John’s life depended on her leaving now, and never seeing him again. She had to stay away, or risk drawing Abaddon’s attention on her family, and on the last legacy of the Men of Letters. The library had to be kept safe, and her boy had to survive.
She drove to Lawrence with tears in her eyes, and resolve wrapped like armor around her heart.
0x0x0x0
Sam was quiet when Geraldine finished her story, taking a minute to absorb the implications of everything she had said and done.
“So Henry’s cousins in Lawrence were ready to take Dad in after both of you disappeared. How did you get them to agree to that without explaining where you were going or why it was necessary for them to get involved?”
For the first time, Geraldine was visibly upset. She had held Sam’s gaze throughout her tale, but now she looked away, ashamed. She raised a hand to her face as if the gesture could shield her, or maybe him, from the words, and Sam could see she was shaking slightly.
“I told Miriam I was having an affair, and that I was leaving Henry to go live out East with my lover. I had wracked my brains to find an explanation they would understand, and that would most likely keep them from telling John anything near the truth. Those days, people didn’t like to talk about infidelity in their family, and the stigma of having a mother who was seen as harlot - the Winchesters in Lawrence were very religious. I - I knew that they would rush to John’s rescue, and take care of Henry.”
She dropped her hand into her lap and impulsively, Sam reached across and took it in his own. Her fingers were long and elegant, but his large hand engulfed hers. He thought about all the things he and Dean had done, all the lies they had told and all their deceptions, large and small. He was the last person to judge her for the decisions she had made or the way they had panned out, for better or for worse. In the scheme of things, both he and Dean had made far worse choices for worse reasons.
“Hey,” Sam said, keeping his voice gentle. Dean called it his guidance counsellor voice. “You did what you had to, what you thought was right. And it worked, didn’t it? Abaddon never found you, or our Dad, or the key to the Men of Letter’s repository of knowledge. Your actions kept Dad alive and kept the Bunker safe. Being in Lawrence meant that Dad found love with our Mom, and because of that me and Dean owe you our lives too.”
“I just wish I could have seen my baby one more time, and that I could have explained to Henry what was going on. I hate thinking that he died believing I had been unfaithful to him… ,” Her voice hitched and Sam didn’t hesitate. He slid across from his chair onto the sofa and pulled their grandmother’s slight figure into his arms. It felt right. Geraldine clung to him, sobbing like a little child, and his heart lurched in his chest.
It was time to tell Geraldine what had happened to the Winchester family after she had left, and after Henry had sacrificed himself in his future. Sam could only hope that she was strong enough to hear it, and that he had the strength to tell it right. He wished Dean would come back, because some of this story wasn’t really Sam’s to tell, and he was so damned tired.
With an effort, he gathered together the tangled threads of their story and started.
It took a long time to tell. Angels and demons, absent Gods and absent fathers, plots and counter plots, the epic voyages to both Heaven and Hell, the manipulations and the lies and the many, many deaths. As a counterpoint to that, there was the loyalty of their friends, the bonds of family that went beyond blood, the resurrections, and the power of sacrifice to which Geraldine had added her shining thread.
When Sam finally finished, he realized that, though exhaustion was running through his veins in the place of blood, he actually felt lighter. This was probably the first time he’d told any single person their whole story, from start to finish, and he was surprised to find that doing so was quite cathartic.
Geraldine held his gaze with eyes that mirrored his own and shone with unshed tears.
“If I’d known what my actions would put my boys through, all of you… ,” She began, her voice shaking a little, but Sam couldn’t allow her to start thinking of what ifs. He understood all too well the darkness and pain that lay down that path of bitter regret. He didn’t see any irony in trying to stop his grandmother from doing what he did every day - wishing he’d been stronger, cleverer, braver, had made better decisions. Wishing he hadn’t hurt and failed his brother so many times.
“You can’t think like that, Geraldine.” He said, his voice low but with an authority that was reinforced by his 200 year sojourn in Lucifer’s cage. “I think this is why we humans can’t know the future. That kind of knowledge would paralyze us. Even angels mess it up, so how could we be expected to know the right thing to do and the right time to do it?”
“Maybe.” Geraldine was silent for a moment, considering, absorbing. “I have been waiting for so many years, half of me hoping that Dean would find me while the other half dreaded the same thing. I had almost given up, but now you are finally here and I find that you have been struggling through such terrible things all alone. I just wish I could have been there for you both when you needed someone.”
Sam didn’t know what to say to that, too large a part of him had longed for so many years for someone in his life who could have filled that hole, it would be hard to sound convincing if he were to lie and say it wouldn’t have helped had Geraldine been there for him, or for Dean, or for Dad. He was saved from thinking of a response when his body decided this was the moment to have one of his coughing fits. Doubled over, he hacked up blood into his handkerchief and this galvanized Geraldine into action like nothing else.
Before Sam knew what was happening, she had him curled up on the big sofa, his head cushioned in her lap. Her hands were gloriously cool and soothing on his forehead, and he closed his eyes for a moment, luxuriating in the overwhelming sense of comfort her attentions gave him. He was so relaxed, he actually missed the moment he fell asleep.
0x0x0x0
Dean couldn’t hold onto his anger for longer than it took him to drive to a mile down the road. He'd never been able to hold onto his rage the way Sam could, even when he believed he had every reason to, and now? He wasn’t even really sure that he had any reason to be angry with Geraldine at all. After all, she had left her family behind in order to protect them, and if that hadn’t worked out exactly as she had intended, Dean knew better than most that this was not necessarily a consequence of Geraldine’s actions. Angels and demons had been fucking with the Winchesters and the Campbells for years, and Dean had every reason to suspect their interference with the course of every single life in their family. It was highly likely that Geraldine’s decision to set up a refuge for John Winchester in Lawrence was not a coincidence, as that was exactly where the angels would have wanted him to be.
He parked the Impala and sat staring blindly out at the dark rain-blurred seascape, gripped by indecision. Part of him wanted to go back to the small cottage and apologize, while another part of him longed for the simplicity of Purgatory, where his whole existence had been survival and killing, combined with the reassurance of knowing that every creature he killed deserved it. He wouldn’t have grown old there, because no human was meant to live in that place, but he could have died knowing a kind of serenity. Here, everything was complicated. Messy. Painful.
He wasn’t sure hold long he sat there, but it must have been a while because the rain had stopped and the moon was peeking out from behind the scudding clouds when he finally restarted the Impala’s engine, taking comfort as he always did in her deep vibrating purr.
When he pulled back into the gravel and earth drive next to Geraldine’s house and made his way slowly to the door, he was still struggling to find the words to make an appropriate apology. He was fully expecting to be greeted with a classic reproachful Sam-look when he re-entered their grandmother’s living room, and though he wasn't ready to deal with it he was fully braced for the inevitability of it. Instead, all coherent thought fled from his head when he took in the unfamiliarly domestic tableau playing out in front of him.
Sam was curled up on the sofa with Geraldine, his head resting on her thigh. His eyes were closed and Geraldine was gently carding her fingers through his too-long hair. His face was still too thin, the cheekbones were too sharp, his eye sockets were shadowed and his skin pallid, but he looked very young like this. At peace.
Dean swallowed hard, blinked a few times and couldn’t stop staring. He thought he should make a noise to tell them he was there, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t think of a single thing to say that would be heard over the loud ache in his heart. Because it hurt how badly Dean wanted this for his little brother. This wasn’t Mom, or even Mom’s ghost, but Geraldine was family, and she’d said, hadn’t she, way back in 1958 when she’d found out about her grandsons, that they were always going to be her boys. And Dean believed her. He had believed her then and he could see it now; and the pain of understanding she’d lived all those years knowing her boys were out there yet never tried to find them? That hollowed Dean’s heart out and made him ache so bad he didn’t know what to do.
Geraldine looked up then, caught Dean staring. He opened his mouth, feeling compelled to say something, anything, but she smiled slightly and put a finger to her lips, and his jaw snapped shut with an audible click.
“He’s sleeping,” she whispered, and Dean didn’t even think thank you Captain Obvious, because then she looked back down at Sam with an expression of such fondness Dean’s heart gave another dizzying lurch. She beckoned Dean over, and he went, obedient as a dog, to perch awkwardly on the edge of the sofa. He dangled his hands between his knees, not knowing what else to do with them without a gun to clean, or a knife to sharpen, or a meal to prepare.
At some point it had started raining again, he could hear its steady pattering as the wind blew it against the windows, and somehow it sounded different here than it did when they were in a no-tell motel somewhere out in mid America. It reminded him of the way it sounded when they were in the Impala. He realized that he had missed the sound of rain like this in the Bunker, insulated as it was from everything - the elements as well as elementals. Funny how it had taken all these months to notice that lack.
Geraldine’s low voice, pitched just right so as not to wake Sam, brought him back to himself.
“Sam told me everything that has happened to you; about my John, and Hell, and the Apocalypse that didn’t happen because of what you two boys did. He told me what you are trying to do now, about the Gates of Hell and all. I’m so proud of you both.”
That kindness seeped through all the minute cracks in Dean’s façade like frost shattering rock. Love was always the thing that broke him.
“Don’t. Please, just don’t... ,” he mumbled, keeping his gaze fixed on his battered boots - not his favourite pair, because he’d left those behind in the past... . He was shocked into looking up when Geraldine laughed, a soft joyous sound.
“Sam also told me you weren’t very good at accepting praise, I guess he wasn’t exaggerating.”
She wriggled around a bit under Sam’s sleepy head and grimaced slightly. Dean could sympathize, Sam was a heavy great lump at the best of times, and Geraldine was probably a third of his weight.
“Here,” Dean offered. “Let me wake him up. It’s late and we should be going. Find ourselves a motel.”
“Absolutely not, I wouldn’t hear of it. You and Sleeping Beauty here can share my bed. It’s king-size and plenty big enough, even for two strapping boys like you. I can sleep here, on the sofa. I’ll just need to sort out some bedding.”
She railroaded over Dean’s half-hearted protests, and to be honest, he was grateful. Sam was always exhausted these days - fucking trials - and Dean was pretty damn beat too. The thought of driving around Harrington looking for somewhere to stay was very unappealing. Dammit, having his own memory foam mattress was making him soft.
Between them they managed to rouse Sam into a vague semblance of wakefulness. Sam teetered on his feet, one arm slung around Dean’s shoulder. Dean grunted as Sam leaned into him.
“Come on, Sasquatch, time for beddie byes,” Dean sang, gaining him a mumbled ‘jerk!’ from Sam.
Who stayed on his feet just long enough for Dean to manhandle him into Geraldine’s surprisingly Spartan bedroom, where he promptly toppled like a giant redwood onto the big bed. Geraldine left Dean to wrestle his comatose little brother out of his button-down, boots and jeans while she dug out her spare bedding to make herself a nest on the sofa. By the time Dean had settled Sam down under the pristine white comforter he was just about ready to dive into that cocoon himself, but he thought he’d better be polite and say good night to their grandmother before turning in.
He was a little taken aback to find Geraldine seated in the kitchen with two large tumblers of what looked like the good stuff and didn’t disappoint. It was the real thing, a 30 year old malt, no less, that slipped down like smooth fire to warm his belly. And not only had she provided the finest of whiskeys that even Rufus would have been impressed by, but there was the most delicious smelling apple pie on a big china plate in the middle of the table. If Dean hadn’t loved the woman already, he’d have fallen head over heels for her in that moment. Not that he’d admit even to himself that love was what it was all about - he’d cite family ties and duty and obligation and any number of words that skirted around the central core truth before he’d acknowledge that this woman he’d met only twice was important to him. Geraldine O’Hara Winchester mattered.
This fact, after his third shot of golden whiskey and second huge slice of pie, was terrifying. Even more scary than the fact that this tiny octogenarian seemed ready and able to drink him under the table.
“I suppose Sam told you the Apocalypse was all his fault?” Dean sighed heavily when Geraldine nodded. “You’d think that kid had been brought up Catholic the way he shoulders guilt.”
Geraldine chuckled. “That seems to be a family trait you share, from what I’ve seen.”
Dean bristled at that, but couldn’t maintain his sense of affront in the face of those knowing, familiar eyes and the golden whiskey glow.
“Did he tell you that I broke the first seal? Dad held out for a hundred years under that torture and never broke, but I wasn’t even strong enough to hold out past thirty…and the things I did then…well, sometimes it’s hard to forgive yourself when you can’t forget what you have done. Sometimes I think I could live seven lifetimes and never save enough people to make up for those ten years wielding the knife in Hell.”
0x0x0x0
Sam opened the door to the bunker and noticed Dean taking a deep inhale as they crossed the threshold as if the scent of the place was some kind of intoxicating perfume. He didn’t comment out loud, but the eternal little brother in him made a note for future teasing. He would be careful how he used it though - because the sentiment behind that breathing in of Dean’s was something he shared. The Bunker had become something they’d never had before in their long lives on the road - a place that belonged solely to them that they could call home - and Sam would never mock that.
Leaving their grandmother behind in Maine had been surprisingly hard. Geraldine had made a deep impression in such a short time, and it made Sam even more regretful that his first encounters with the Campbell side of their family had been whilst he was lacking his soul. Perhaps he could have made a better connection with Samuel over the months they had worked together, if he’d been able to feel even a fraction of the empathy that had flowed between Geraldine and himself in the few hours they’d spent in her company.
She had seen them off only after eliciting a promise that they would keep in touch. “Don’t be strangers, boys,” she’d said, and Sam had been amused to see Dean duck his head and blush like a ten year old. Whatever animosity Dean had been nurturing seemed to have dissipated while Sam had been sleeping, possibly over pie and coffee, if the crumbs and dirty cups on the kitchen table had been anything to go by.
0x0x0x0
As time went by following their return home, Sam refrained from commenting on how often Dean found a reason to ‘just swing by’ Harrington. Suddenly, there were cases to be found on the east coast that required the personal intervention of the Winchester brothers - from a possible tooth fairy gone bad in Bangor to a completely harmless death echo in Portland, and Sam was secretly both amused and happy to find that Garth had so obviously been instructed to send anything even vaguely suspicious their way if it originated in the vicinity of Maine.
It felt good, it filled a gaping hole in both their lives that Sam knew would be hard to bear when the old lady eventually passed away, but he was determined they should take the risk of forming the attachment regardless. Although they never discussed it, clearly Dean felt the same. It was family business, after all.
The end