SPN: "Snapshot"
Category: Supernatural, This Christmas Day 'verse
Title: Snapshot
Word Count: 3500
Rating: PG
Notes: This is a weird experimental little thing, and I don't know exactly how to summarize or explain it. I'm not even sure if this is going to be a one-shot, or just the first chapter, or if I'm posting it anywhere else. It's more beside the main chronology than part of it.
They're on Tim's new boat at the lake. Tim drives-fortunately, more carefully than he does in his car-and his wife, Jamie, goes a little camera-happy.
It's a good day, friends and fun, burgers and beer, and even a little sunburn.
John slides his arm around Mary where she stands at the back of the boat, and they obligingly smile when Jamie shouts "Cheese!"
That night, Mary tells him she's pregnant.
***
Edward IV is just over ten months old. He's not even fully weaned yet, and certainly isn't big enough for his own bed, so Third builds a makeshift wall of blankets between him and his newborn sister. The crib is a huge antique, anyway, they could fit another five babies in here.
The next morning, the blanket separator has been demolished, and Edward IV is snuggled up to his sister. Newborns don't really smile or laugh, but that's the impression Third has nevertheless.
Anne snaps a Polaroid, then leans against him and says, "I think she's a Marcy, not a Marcella."
***
Dean stands tiptoe on a stool, peering into the crib that holds his new baby brother. A stuffed blue bear with a red bow stuck on its head sits on the floor. Dean needed both hands to pull himself up.
Dean tries to give Sammy his favorite Matchbox car instead, to the horror of John-"lead paint!"-and the amusement of Mary.
The bear's forgotten on a shelf by the time the nursery burns.
***
Anne walks into the nursery with Sean's afternoon bottle and isn't sure whether she should laugh or cry.
Eight children means she's seen sibling rivalry in all its glorious colors, but Marcy has climbed into the crib with Sean, and there's half a book of twenty-cent stamps stuck all over the baby's face. Sean seems bemused at the attention.
"Marcy!"
Marcy looks up at her innocently. "When's the mailman come, Mama?"
It becomes a family legend, and Firth has to buy stamps for Marcy until she gets married and can make her husband do it, because she's too embarrassed to go into a post office.
***
Sammy cries all the time. Nothing John does makes him happy.
Dean never cries. Never speaks. Never smiles. He barely eats and only sleeps when exhaustion knocks him out. No matter how hard he tries, John can't find a way to reach him.
John himself is close to breaking. Maybe the boys really would be better off with social services, where they could get professional help and real homes, and he could just go off and drink himself into oblivion. Or...there's a gun in the Impala's trunk, from his old Marine days. It would be quick. He could call 911 before he does it, and the boys wouldn't be alone long. Dean's practically catatonic, he can hardly be more traumatized.
Sammy's wails stop. They don't trail off, like they do when he cries himself to sleep; they just stop.
John walks over to the donated crib, and blinks, not sure of what he's seeing.
Dean has climbed in and is curled around Sammy, like some less damaged child might curl up with a stuffed animal. Sammy is sucking on Dean's thumb. They're both soundly, peacefully asleep, in a way John hasn't seen since their world ended.
The smile chokes him, and then he locks himself in the bathroom and weeps.
***
Eight-five girls, three boys-was a nice round number, and they were good with it.
Daughter number six was a total surprise.
Marcy holds her new baby sister with the care appropriate to a much older child, and looks down at Hannah in a strange kind of wonder that Anne's never seen. This is definitely not how Marcy reacted to Sean. Firth seems a little confused, too.
Marcy wants to do everything for the baby, doesn't want to let Anne do anything-not feeding, not bathing, not even diaper changes.
"Well," Third says philosophically to Anne when they find Marcy trying to single-handedly move the heavy antique crib into her own bedroom, "at least we don't have to hide the stamps again."
***
John sits on the back of a battered old pickup at Singer's, Sammy in his lap, Dean standing beside them. They're wrapped up in cold-weather gear, some camo, some bright orange, with a rifle lying in the truck bed next to John.
There are no smiles. Not any more.
***
Two perfectly restored '67 Impalas sit in front of the garage. Bruce is slate blue, Brandy is candy apple red. Marcy and Firth stand beside their new cars with Third between them, proud of all his handiwork. Marcy can't drive yet, won't for another couple of years, but these cars have gone through so much together that it didn't seem right to rush Firth's and delay Marcy's. It's the first time he's had to finish two cars at once. Thank goodness he and Anne never had any twins.
Bruce has decades left.
Brandy won't live to see Marcy get her license.
***
"He needs to be heading home."
"He's drunk."
"So's everybody else," Ellen points out ruthlessly. "Get him out of here, Bill. His boys are too young to be staying by themselves, no matter what he thinks."
Bill thinks about it. "Got it," he says. "Joanna!"
And that's how there's a picture behind the bar of tiny Joanna Beth Harvelle strangle-hugging the neck of a highly inebriated John Winchester, who stormed out precisely three seconds after the camera went snick.
***
Three children sit in a chill-looking hospital room. Firth is all awkward unfinished teenager; he sits in the bed, a butterflied cut above his eyebrow, both eyes freshly blackened, one arm in a sling. Marcy is in a wheelchair beside the bed, leaning forward a bit; she is thin and pale and worn in a way no girl her age should be, and one hand presses against her stomach, just a bit, like it hurts.
On the edge of the bed, safe between them, sits Hannah, their little sister, the third point of their sibling triangle, her dark eyes big and panicked, two fingers buddy-taped.
If you look close enough, you can tell that Firth and Marcy are gently holding her in place with their respective good hands, keeping her from bolting.
***
"It's not fair," Sam whines, and Bobby refrains from smacking him on the head, because he knows the kid doesn't really mean to whine. He's a teenager. It's what they do.
"I'm going to flunk this assignment because we don't have anything," Sam goes on, and no, that sound isn't Bobby's heart breaking, not one bit. "I can do the written part, no trouble, but Mr. Martens says we have to have photos, or we automatically flunk! I even tried to explain, but he said I was just trying to weasel out of showing baby pictures! I don't have any baby pictures! Everything before Mom died burned, and we don't have a camera, and no place to keep pictures anyway! I mean, there's one in Dad's journal, but that's with him and he'd never let me have it."
Bobby can fix part of that, at least. "There's an old Polaroid upstairs, in the closet. Some film and flashes, too. That work?"
Sam turns into a shutterbug for a week, taking as many pictures as he can of Dean, and the Impala, and he even sneaks one of John, to John's dismay and Bobby's eternal amusement.
Some of them don't get put in the paper, and they stay in an envelope in Bobby's desk: Dean, sitting on the porch with one of the dogs beside him; Dean, washing the Impala with all the reverence of a priest cleaning an altar; Dean, aiming a gun at the targets in the back of the yard. They're nice pictures. Sam's got a good eye for light and composition, even with that cranky old Polaroid.
Dean catches on. He gets hold of the camera and takes a picture of Sam sleeping-with Karen's grandma's turn-of-the-century pink Easter hat and its ginormous bundle of fake tulips propped up on his head.
That picture lives in the desk, too.
***
Vegas is all harsh lights and tourist traps. The proposal is a little out of the blue.
As in, Neil hides her engagement ring in a froofy blue drink with enough umbrellas to stock an entire beach.
Neil wants an Elvis wedding. Marcy, annoyed-she drinks whiskey, not froofy, and hates the beach, and he knows that-counters with Camelot and RenFaire garb.
They settle on something more traditional with a modest photo package.
When he sees it, Firth remarks that she looks like she's ready to brain Neil with the bunch of fake white roses she's holding.
It probably should have been a sign.
***
There's a fire-resistant box under the guns in the Impala's hidden compartment. Dean picked it up cheap at a thrift store when he was seventeen and reset the combination. Dad thinks it's where he keeps the extra specialty ammo. Dad took the real lockbox with his half of the silver and gold ammo when he left.
It's mostly empty. There's a duplicate of the picture of him and Mom that he keeps in his wallet, and a certified copy of his birth certificate, picked up on a trip through Topeka when Dean realized he was going to need his to get his GED. He'd picked up one for Sammy, too, but when Sammy left, Dean slipped the certificate into his duffel, in case Sammy needed it at college.
Nowadays, Dean only opens it to add a mug shot to his collection: the life and times of Dean Winchester, chronicled in felonies. It's a game-escape, then circle back and rifle the files, right under the cops' dense little noses.
It used to be fun. Now it's habit, like maintaining the armory and filling out credit applications. Most of the time, he just waits and prints it out off the Internet a couple of towns later, rather than going to all the trouble.
The last time he physically stole a picture, it was in Ohio, and it wasn't a police station. He broke in while she was in class, went through the stack of pictures she swore she was going to put into albums someday, and found one that was a double print.
Cassie won't miss the extra. Just like she won't miss him.
***
Marcy's past "drunk" and rapidly approaching "plastered." To say she's thrilled about the annulment is putting things mildly. She got that certificate from Rome, put it carefully away, and went out and bought a special edition case of Johnnie Walker Blue. Hannah's a little tipsy, but she at least had the presence of mind to hide all the keys. Thank God their parents are out of town.
Firth doesn't drink-he can't have alcohol with his meds-but he's still not entirely sure how he wound up with a shot of his sister striking a dramatic pose in one of Courtney's old prom dresses, Dad's favorite workboots, and a Carmen Miranda hat while Hannah laughs hysterically from the couch and a vase goes zooming by, untouched by human hands. You'd think he'd remember taking that. You'd think he'd remember seeing that.
Besides, nobody in their family owns a Carmen Miranda hat.
***
The Impala gleams darkly in the graveled parking lot of Harvelle's. Dean leans back against the door, arms crossed, smirking. Sam props against the front bumper, looking uncomfortable, like he wants to be anywhere else-but with a hint of a tolerant, weary smile, I can't believe I let you talk me into this.
It's the first photo anyone's taken of the two of them together since that day on the pickup.
***
The flash is unexpected, and Sam winds up wincing against the sudden light. A pad of gauze has been placed awkwardly over the eye that is below the cut, to keep blood and cleansers from getting into it. His skin is still stained where the nurses couldn't scrub off all the old blood for fear of reopening the spots that have actually stopped bleeding, and there's a blood drop forever poised to fall at the lower end of the slash, where it hooks towards his ear.
In the second photo-plastic surgeons always take before-and-after photos, just in case-his eyes are glazed, a little, from drugs and worry, and a train-track line of fine sutures marches up to his hairline.
***
"Oh, come on! I did Charlotte last year!"
Firth's blue eyes are innocent as he says, "I still have that picture from the night the annulment came through."
"Some day," Janet says, "the rest of us are going to see this famous picture."
Firth gets Wilmington, again, and Marcy gets stuck with Charlotte.
The display patient for the fall fundraisers is a gorgeous guy in a wheelchair so new it practically still has price tags, and the first time she spots him, he's gotten blocked in the corner by some idiots with no manners. It's a manual chair, so he can't just drive over them the way Firth can, and something about it makes her think he's still new at this. People who have been in chairs awhile know how to avoid getting in that kind of situation.
Marcy can't help it. She has to rescue him. And then, just to be nice, she offers to get him something to nibble on.
His eyes-somewhere between green and hazel, and can she just say damn-light up, and he grins. "You?"
She meant the buffet, but hell, this is good too.
***
Dean parks his chair next to Bruce, digs the rectangle of hard, holograph-covered plastic out of his pocket, and holds it up.
"You want a picture of you and your license?"
"I got my reasons."
It's months more before Marcy realizes: It's the first legal license Dean's ever had.
***
"Sam!"
Sam looks up, and a flash goes off. "Sarah!"
She laughs and comes over. "I wanted a shot of you in your new office."
Sam glances around pointedly. It's a cramped room in the basement of the auction house, fit for the adjectives "dark," "dank," and "ew." The battered desk is possibly older than Massachusetts. The only light is a bare bulb in the ceiling. The set of books he's been going through are witchcraft manuals in Latin, and smell like incense and nursing home.
But it's a job. It's normal, like his new apartment and new bed. And soon he'll have enough money to afford some real neurology journals, see what the current promising treatments for nerve death are.
Dean's not made for normal, and Sam's going to give him back his life if it's the last thing he does.
***
"C'mere, you," Dean snarls playfully at Marcy, and Marcy laughs, free and light-hearted, in a way Courtney hasn't seen in years, and lets herself be tugged into Dean's lap. Kissing ensues, broken up into more laughter by a chorus of "ewww" from the pre-puberty set.
Marcy slides her arms around Dean and leans her head on his shoulder, and Dean wraps an arm around her, and Kim manages to get the shot before either one of them realizes the cameras have come out.
Courtney and Kim exchange looks, and Courtney glances at Jenn, who nods.
He is definitely the one.
***
It's a hospital-issue photograph, wallet size, of a newborn baby in a hospital bassinet, accompanied by a sheet of plain paper with a single printed line.
Dean's seen a lot of pain in his time. He's inflicted some of it. Had a hefty amount inflicted on him. It's the way hunting works.
But no monster, not even Yellow Eyes, ever did as much damage to him as that simple line of text does to Marcy.
This is what a real woman makes.
If Dean ever meets Marcy's ex-husband, he's going to tear the son of a bitch apart.
***
The bones of Dean's ankle are stark white against the black background of the x-ray. The break is so obvious even he can see it, and cuts across two bones-the long ones of the lower leg, right above all the squished-looking ones in the ankle and foot.
"There's not a lot of displacement," the doctor says, "so a cast should be fine. We'll have to keep watching it to make sure, though."
Dean looks at Marcy, who's sitting in the chair by the door, and fails utterly at not grinning like a loon. "That'll work," he said.
"How did you do this?"
"Fell out of bed."
Marcy snorts, and then they're both laughing, and the doctor's looking at them oddly, probably wondering if he should call in somebody from the psych ward.
He errs on the side of professionalism. "I'll be back in a minute to get that cast started."
"Yeah, he thinks we're crazy," Marcy says as soon as the door closes.
"We're not?" Dean asks brightly, and that sets them off again. At least, until she leans over and kisses him.
Dean's broken a lot of bones, but this is the first time it ever resulted in a marriage proposal.
***
There's an infuriated man standing in the middle of her living room. Tall, hair too long to be short and too short to be long, decent-looking but nothing on Dean, shouting at her fiancé like there's no neighbors at all. He has a still-raw scar cutting across his face and all that fury.
She's never seen a picture, Dean doesn't have any, but Marcy knows who this has to be: Sam. Her future brother-in-law.
Sam. Who clearly thinks Dean is brain-damaged, not crippled, and that she's only in this to indulge some kind of wheelchair fetish.
Marcy kicks her shoes across the room with the extra little flourish that makes one heel pierce the drywall that Dean just fixed. Sam gives her a hostile glare that, combined with his size, is clearly meant to intimidate her.
Marcy manages not to laugh.
She may not actually enjoy taking Dean's spoiled, overgrown baby brother down a notch, but it's going to give her a lovely sense of accomplishment.
***
Jo's got a knife in her dress. Missouri keeps glaring at him. Bobby keeps poking him. Ellen probably has a gun in her purse.
Sam chokes down the anger and the tears. This isn't right, but he promised everybody he'd behave. He won't speak up. He'll forever hold his peace.
Jo does have that knife, after all.
At least Bobby only threatened to eviscerate him, not castrate him.
The maid of honor-one of Marcy's sisters, every time he turns around there's another one-is coming down the aisle now, and to his surprise, Dean yanks his cane out of the holder on his chair and lurches to his feet.
"Dean-"
"Dude, you think I'm getting married in that thing?" Dean makes a jerking motion with his head, and Sam, bewildered, quickly moves the wheelchair out of the way.
There are tears in Marcy's eyes when she reaches them. She quickly hands off the bouquet and reaches for Dean's free hand-and uses one hand to help brace his arm, giving him that extra bit of support in case his crippled legs give out or he moves wrong.
Helping him stand. No pity. No reluctance. Just acceptance.
It's the only image Sam ever really remembers of Dean's wedding: his brother, sacrificing his pride and for once not insisting on standing on his own.
Dean really does love this woman.
The anger fades. The tears still have to be choked down.
Sam hasn't gained a sister. He's lost his brother.
***
Marcy collapses onto the bed in their hotel room, worn out from a nine-hour drive, and Dean can't help it. He gets a picture with his phone.
"I heard that," she growls, not looking at him.
"Heard what?" he asks innocently.
She props herself up on her elbows. "It's not too late for us to go to Hawaii. We can afford last-minute plane tickets."
"Erasing it," he says quickly, even though they both know he isn't, and she laughs and gets up to open the balcony doors to let in the smell of beach and the distant roar of the speedway.
She doesn't hear when he takes a picture of her standing there, one hand still on the doorjamb, the breeze ruffling her hair. Her expression holds a calm kind of joy, like she's completely forgotten Neil and the poltergeists and all the rest, like it's only them and it will only be them forever.
Dean doesn't believe in forever.
Still, he sets it as the background image on his phone, and every phone he has later.
Title: Snapshot
Word Count: 3500
Rating: PG
Notes: This is a weird experimental little thing, and I don't know exactly how to summarize or explain it. I'm not even sure if this is going to be a one-shot, or just the first chapter, or if I'm posting it anywhere else. It's more beside the main chronology than part of it.
They're on Tim's new boat at the lake. Tim drives-fortunately, more carefully than he does in his car-and his wife, Jamie, goes a little camera-happy.
It's a good day, friends and fun, burgers and beer, and even a little sunburn.
John slides his arm around Mary where she stands at the back of the boat, and they obligingly smile when Jamie shouts "Cheese!"
That night, Mary tells him she's pregnant.
***
Edward IV is just over ten months old. He's not even fully weaned yet, and certainly isn't big enough for his own bed, so Third builds a makeshift wall of blankets between him and his newborn sister. The crib is a huge antique, anyway, they could fit another five babies in here.
The next morning, the blanket separator has been demolished, and Edward IV is snuggled up to his sister. Newborns don't really smile or laugh, but that's the impression Third has nevertheless.
Anne snaps a Polaroid, then leans against him and says, "I think she's a Marcy, not a Marcella."
***
Dean stands tiptoe on a stool, peering into the crib that holds his new baby brother. A stuffed blue bear with a red bow stuck on its head sits on the floor. Dean needed both hands to pull himself up.
Dean tries to give Sammy his favorite Matchbox car instead, to the horror of John-"lead paint!"-and the amusement of Mary.
The bear's forgotten on a shelf by the time the nursery burns.
***
Anne walks into the nursery with Sean's afternoon bottle and isn't sure whether she should laugh or cry.
Eight children means she's seen sibling rivalry in all its glorious colors, but Marcy has climbed into the crib with Sean, and there's half a book of twenty-cent stamps stuck all over the baby's face. Sean seems bemused at the attention.
"Marcy!"
Marcy looks up at her innocently. "When's the mailman come, Mama?"
It becomes a family legend, and Firth has to buy stamps for Marcy until she gets married and can make her husband do it, because she's too embarrassed to go into a post office.
***
Sammy cries all the time. Nothing John does makes him happy.
Dean never cries. Never speaks. Never smiles. He barely eats and only sleeps when exhaustion knocks him out. No matter how hard he tries, John can't find a way to reach him.
John himself is close to breaking. Maybe the boys really would be better off with social services, where they could get professional help and real homes, and he could just go off and drink himself into oblivion. Or...there's a gun in the Impala's trunk, from his old Marine days. It would be quick. He could call 911 before he does it, and the boys wouldn't be alone long. Dean's practically catatonic, he can hardly be more traumatized.
Sammy's wails stop. They don't trail off, like they do when he cries himself to sleep; they just stop.
John walks over to the donated crib, and blinks, not sure of what he's seeing.
Dean has climbed in and is curled around Sammy, like some less damaged child might curl up with a stuffed animal. Sammy is sucking on Dean's thumb. They're both soundly, peacefully asleep, in a way John hasn't seen since their world ended.
The smile chokes him, and then he locks himself in the bathroom and weeps.
***
Eight-five girls, three boys-was a nice round number, and they were good with it.
Daughter number six was a total surprise.
Marcy holds her new baby sister with the care appropriate to a much older child, and looks down at Hannah in a strange kind of wonder that Anne's never seen. This is definitely not how Marcy reacted to Sean. Firth seems a little confused, too.
Marcy wants to do everything for the baby, doesn't want to let Anne do anything-not feeding, not bathing, not even diaper changes.
"Well," Third says philosophically to Anne when they find Marcy trying to single-handedly move the heavy antique crib into her own bedroom, "at least we don't have to hide the stamps again."
***
John sits on the back of a battered old pickup at Singer's, Sammy in his lap, Dean standing beside them. They're wrapped up in cold-weather gear, some camo, some bright orange, with a rifle lying in the truck bed next to John.
There are no smiles. Not any more.
***
Two perfectly restored '67 Impalas sit in front of the garage. Bruce is slate blue, Brandy is candy apple red. Marcy and Firth stand beside their new cars with Third between them, proud of all his handiwork. Marcy can't drive yet, won't for another couple of years, but these cars have gone through so much together that it didn't seem right to rush Firth's and delay Marcy's. It's the first time he's had to finish two cars at once. Thank goodness he and Anne never had any twins.
Bruce has decades left.
Brandy won't live to see Marcy get her license.
***
"He needs to be heading home."
"He's drunk."
"So's everybody else," Ellen points out ruthlessly. "Get him out of here, Bill. His boys are too young to be staying by themselves, no matter what he thinks."
Bill thinks about it. "Got it," he says. "Joanna!"
And that's how there's a picture behind the bar of tiny Joanna Beth Harvelle strangle-hugging the neck of a highly inebriated John Winchester, who stormed out precisely three seconds after the camera went snick.
***
Three children sit in a chill-looking hospital room. Firth is all awkward unfinished teenager; he sits in the bed, a butterflied cut above his eyebrow, both eyes freshly blackened, one arm in a sling. Marcy is in a wheelchair beside the bed, leaning forward a bit; she is thin and pale and worn in a way no girl her age should be, and one hand presses against her stomach, just a bit, like it hurts.
On the edge of the bed, safe between them, sits Hannah, their little sister, the third point of their sibling triangle, her dark eyes big and panicked, two fingers buddy-taped.
If you look close enough, you can tell that Firth and Marcy are gently holding her in place with their respective good hands, keeping her from bolting.
***
"It's not fair," Sam whines, and Bobby refrains from smacking him on the head, because he knows the kid doesn't really mean to whine. He's a teenager. It's what they do.
"I'm going to flunk this assignment because we don't have anything," Sam goes on, and no, that sound isn't Bobby's heart breaking, not one bit. "I can do the written part, no trouble, but Mr. Martens says we have to have photos, or we automatically flunk! I even tried to explain, but he said I was just trying to weasel out of showing baby pictures! I don't have any baby pictures! Everything before Mom died burned, and we don't have a camera, and no place to keep pictures anyway! I mean, there's one in Dad's journal, but that's with him and he'd never let me have it."
Bobby can fix part of that, at least. "There's an old Polaroid upstairs, in the closet. Some film and flashes, too. That work?"
Sam turns into a shutterbug for a week, taking as many pictures as he can of Dean, and the Impala, and he even sneaks one of John, to John's dismay and Bobby's eternal amusement.
Some of them don't get put in the paper, and they stay in an envelope in Bobby's desk: Dean, sitting on the porch with one of the dogs beside him; Dean, washing the Impala with all the reverence of a priest cleaning an altar; Dean, aiming a gun at the targets in the back of the yard. They're nice pictures. Sam's got a good eye for light and composition, even with that cranky old Polaroid.
Dean catches on. He gets hold of the camera and takes a picture of Sam sleeping-with Karen's grandma's turn-of-the-century pink Easter hat and its ginormous bundle of fake tulips propped up on his head.
That picture lives in the desk, too.
***
Vegas is all harsh lights and tourist traps. The proposal is a little out of the blue.
As in, Neil hides her engagement ring in a froofy blue drink with enough umbrellas to stock an entire beach.
Neil wants an Elvis wedding. Marcy, annoyed-she drinks whiskey, not froofy, and hates the beach, and he knows that-counters with Camelot and RenFaire garb.
They settle on something more traditional with a modest photo package.
When he sees it, Firth remarks that she looks like she's ready to brain Neil with the bunch of fake white roses she's holding.
It probably should have been a sign.
***
There's a fire-resistant box under the guns in the Impala's hidden compartment. Dean picked it up cheap at a thrift store when he was seventeen and reset the combination. Dad thinks it's where he keeps the extra specialty ammo. Dad took the real lockbox with his half of the silver and gold ammo when he left.
It's mostly empty. There's a duplicate of the picture of him and Mom that he keeps in his wallet, and a certified copy of his birth certificate, picked up on a trip through Topeka when Dean realized he was going to need his to get his GED. He'd picked up one for Sammy, too, but when Sammy left, Dean slipped the certificate into his duffel, in case Sammy needed it at college.
Nowadays, Dean only opens it to add a mug shot to his collection: the life and times of Dean Winchester, chronicled in felonies. It's a game-escape, then circle back and rifle the files, right under the cops' dense little noses.
It used to be fun. Now it's habit, like maintaining the armory and filling out credit applications. Most of the time, he just waits and prints it out off the Internet a couple of towns later, rather than going to all the trouble.
The last time he physically stole a picture, it was in Ohio, and it wasn't a police station. He broke in while she was in class, went through the stack of pictures she swore she was going to put into albums someday, and found one that was a double print.
Cassie won't miss the extra. Just like she won't miss him.
***
Marcy's past "drunk" and rapidly approaching "plastered." To say she's thrilled about the annulment is putting things mildly. She got that certificate from Rome, put it carefully away, and went out and bought a special edition case of Johnnie Walker Blue. Hannah's a little tipsy, but she at least had the presence of mind to hide all the keys. Thank God their parents are out of town.
Firth doesn't drink-he can't have alcohol with his meds-but he's still not entirely sure how he wound up with a shot of his sister striking a dramatic pose in one of Courtney's old prom dresses, Dad's favorite workboots, and a Carmen Miranda hat while Hannah laughs hysterically from the couch and a vase goes zooming by, untouched by human hands. You'd think he'd remember taking that. You'd think he'd remember seeing that.
Besides, nobody in their family owns a Carmen Miranda hat.
***
The Impala gleams darkly in the graveled parking lot of Harvelle's. Dean leans back against the door, arms crossed, smirking. Sam props against the front bumper, looking uncomfortable, like he wants to be anywhere else-but with a hint of a tolerant, weary smile, I can't believe I let you talk me into this.
It's the first photo anyone's taken of the two of them together since that day on the pickup.
***
The flash is unexpected, and Sam winds up wincing against the sudden light. A pad of gauze has been placed awkwardly over the eye that is below the cut, to keep blood and cleansers from getting into it. His skin is still stained where the nurses couldn't scrub off all the old blood for fear of reopening the spots that have actually stopped bleeding, and there's a blood drop forever poised to fall at the lower end of the slash, where it hooks towards his ear.
In the second photo-plastic surgeons always take before-and-after photos, just in case-his eyes are glazed, a little, from drugs and worry, and a train-track line of fine sutures marches up to his hairline.
***
"Oh, come on! I did Charlotte last year!"
Firth's blue eyes are innocent as he says, "I still have that picture from the night the annulment came through."
"Some day," Janet says, "the rest of us are going to see this famous picture."
Firth gets Wilmington, again, and Marcy gets stuck with Charlotte.
The display patient for the fall fundraisers is a gorgeous guy in a wheelchair so new it practically still has price tags, and the first time she spots him, he's gotten blocked in the corner by some idiots with no manners. It's a manual chair, so he can't just drive over them the way Firth can, and something about it makes her think he's still new at this. People who have been in chairs awhile know how to avoid getting in that kind of situation.
Marcy can't help it. She has to rescue him. And then, just to be nice, she offers to get him something to nibble on.
His eyes-somewhere between green and hazel, and can she just say damn-light up, and he grins. "You?"
She meant the buffet, but hell, this is good too.
***
Dean parks his chair next to Bruce, digs the rectangle of hard, holograph-covered plastic out of his pocket, and holds it up.
"You want a picture of you and your license?"
"I got my reasons."
It's months more before Marcy realizes: It's the first legal license Dean's ever had.
***
"Sam!"
Sam looks up, and a flash goes off. "Sarah!"
She laughs and comes over. "I wanted a shot of you in your new office."
Sam glances around pointedly. It's a cramped room in the basement of the auction house, fit for the adjectives "dark," "dank," and "ew." The battered desk is possibly older than Massachusetts. The only light is a bare bulb in the ceiling. The set of books he's been going through are witchcraft manuals in Latin, and smell like incense and nursing home.
But it's a job. It's normal, like his new apartment and new bed. And soon he'll have enough money to afford some real neurology journals, see what the current promising treatments for nerve death are.
Dean's not made for normal, and Sam's going to give him back his life if it's the last thing he does.
***
"C'mere, you," Dean snarls playfully at Marcy, and Marcy laughs, free and light-hearted, in a way Courtney hasn't seen in years, and lets herself be tugged into Dean's lap. Kissing ensues, broken up into more laughter by a chorus of "ewww" from the pre-puberty set.
Marcy slides her arms around Dean and leans her head on his shoulder, and Dean wraps an arm around her, and Kim manages to get the shot before either one of them realizes the cameras have come out.
Courtney and Kim exchange looks, and Courtney glances at Jenn, who nods.
He is definitely the one.
***
It's a hospital-issue photograph, wallet size, of a newborn baby in a hospital bassinet, accompanied by a sheet of plain paper with a single printed line.
Dean's seen a lot of pain in his time. He's inflicted some of it. Had a hefty amount inflicted on him. It's the way hunting works.
But no monster, not even Yellow Eyes, ever did as much damage to him as that simple line of text does to Marcy.
This is what a real woman makes.
If Dean ever meets Marcy's ex-husband, he's going to tear the son of a bitch apart.
***
The bones of Dean's ankle are stark white against the black background of the x-ray. The break is so obvious even he can see it, and cuts across two bones-the long ones of the lower leg, right above all the squished-looking ones in the ankle and foot.
"There's not a lot of displacement," the doctor says, "so a cast should be fine. We'll have to keep watching it to make sure, though."
Dean looks at Marcy, who's sitting in the chair by the door, and fails utterly at not grinning like a loon. "That'll work," he said.
"How did you do this?"
"Fell out of bed."
Marcy snorts, and then they're both laughing, and the doctor's looking at them oddly, probably wondering if he should call in somebody from the psych ward.
He errs on the side of professionalism. "I'll be back in a minute to get that cast started."
"Yeah, he thinks we're crazy," Marcy says as soon as the door closes.
"We're not?" Dean asks brightly, and that sets them off again. At least, until she leans over and kisses him.
Dean's broken a lot of bones, but this is the first time it ever resulted in a marriage proposal.
***
There's an infuriated man standing in the middle of her living room. Tall, hair too long to be short and too short to be long, decent-looking but nothing on Dean, shouting at her fiancé like there's no neighbors at all. He has a still-raw scar cutting across his face and all that fury.
She's never seen a picture, Dean doesn't have any, but Marcy knows who this has to be: Sam. Her future brother-in-law.
Sam. Who clearly thinks Dean is brain-damaged, not crippled, and that she's only in this to indulge some kind of wheelchair fetish.
Marcy kicks her shoes across the room with the extra little flourish that makes one heel pierce the drywall that Dean just fixed. Sam gives her a hostile glare that, combined with his size, is clearly meant to intimidate her.
Marcy manages not to laugh.
She may not actually enjoy taking Dean's spoiled, overgrown baby brother down a notch, but it's going to give her a lovely sense of accomplishment.
***
Jo's got a knife in her dress. Missouri keeps glaring at him. Bobby keeps poking him. Ellen probably has a gun in her purse.
Sam chokes down the anger and the tears. This isn't right, but he promised everybody he'd behave. He won't speak up. He'll forever hold his peace.
Jo does have that knife, after all.
At least Bobby only threatened to eviscerate him, not castrate him.
The maid of honor-one of Marcy's sisters, every time he turns around there's another one-is coming down the aisle now, and to his surprise, Dean yanks his cane out of the holder on his chair and lurches to his feet.
"Dean-"
"Dude, you think I'm getting married in that thing?" Dean makes a jerking motion with his head, and Sam, bewildered, quickly moves the wheelchair out of the way.
There are tears in Marcy's eyes when she reaches them. She quickly hands off the bouquet and reaches for Dean's free hand-and uses one hand to help brace his arm, giving him that extra bit of support in case his crippled legs give out or he moves wrong.
Helping him stand. No pity. No reluctance. Just acceptance.
It's the only image Sam ever really remembers of Dean's wedding: his brother, sacrificing his pride and for once not insisting on standing on his own.
Dean really does love this woman.
The anger fades. The tears still have to be choked down.
Sam hasn't gained a sister. He's lost his brother.
***
Marcy collapses onto the bed in their hotel room, worn out from a nine-hour drive, and Dean can't help it. He gets a picture with his phone.
"I heard that," she growls, not looking at him.
"Heard what?" he asks innocently.
She props herself up on her elbows. "It's not too late for us to go to Hawaii. We can afford last-minute plane tickets."
"Erasing it," he says quickly, even though they both know he isn't, and she laughs and gets up to open the balcony doors to let in the smell of beach and the distant roar of the speedway.
She doesn't hear when he takes a picture of her standing there, one hand still on the doorjamb, the breeze ruffling her hair. Her expression holds a calm kind of joy, like she's completely forgotten Neil and the poltergeists and all the rest, like it's only them and it will only be them forever.
Dean doesn't believe in forever.
Still, he sets it as the background image on his phone, and every phone he has later.