What was silent
>> What was silent
TITLE: What was silent
AUTHOR:ultraviolet9a
SPOILER: stretches from pre-series up to 4.07
GENRE: Gen
CHARACTERS: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer, John Winchester, Daniel Elkins, Castiel
SUMMARY: Like father, like son.
RATING: PG13. Just cussing, really.
FEEDBACK: Dude…duh.
DISCLAIMER: Don’t own, no profit, don’t sue.
NOTE: sweet charity fic. may7fic is crazy awesome and bought me. She wanted a story about John’s fallout with Elkins (that affects the boys up to the present) and she wanted some shiny sent John’s way and she wanted the Dean-John father-son thing in all its Winchester glory. I tried to stay close to that, but I tweaked it. A lot. Because I wanted Castiel, too. Amongst others. And wanted season 4 involved as well. Ahem.
BETA: All the pretty polishing I couldn’t have done without the shiny beta of the sparkly chemm80 and the amazing erinrua . Much love to e313for the handholding as well. Thank you, shiny ladies.
Bobby’s lifting stacks and stacks of books. The dust still flutters in the air, caught unaware in the draughts of Bobby’s whirlwind moves. It’s disconcerting, really, the whole whirlwind thing. If Bobby was a force of nature, he’d be something steady and unyielding, like a mountain, or a glacier. Something with deep roots, close to the ground, bearing weight. Living with it. Something with fewer moves, but heavier momentum.
He’s moving stacks around, freeing long lost surfaces of furniture, all the while grumbling “I’m sure it’s here somewhere”. One book is balancing on the edge, forming the top of a paper tower. Dean shoves his hands deeper in his pockets and watches it lose the fight with gravity.
Sam’s hand shoots out, grabs it midair, places it on top again, using his thigh to keep another book tower steady.
“Are you sure, Bobby?” Sam, the human book prop, says. “You sure it’s not somewhere else?”
“No.” It comes through gritted teeth. “If you say you ain’t got it, it’s here alright. It’s got to be here.”
“I can help you,” Sam says.
“No!” Bobby says. “You don’t know the system.”
“There’s an actual system?!”
“Just cuz you don’t get it, don’t mean it ain’t one,” Bobby says, and Dean keeps on looking. At the books. At his brother. Sam’s eyes have green bleeding into brown in the sunlight. Specks of gold like the dust hanging in the air. Specks. Just specks, is all. Dean lowers his head.
He feels Bobby grow still, no longer a whirlwind. Hears it in his voice, asking “You alright there, Dean?”
Dean uses his smile, the one he knows could shame a million suns.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I mean, if we count out the freaking Apocalypse and me almost dying….again…” He shrugs. “It’s all good.”
“You’ve been restless in your sleep,” Sam says. There’s a question there. It asks of Hell. Dean can’t answer how Hell is made of gold and yellow these days.
“I’m having nightmares,” he says, licking his upper lip. “It involves Chihuahuas. And they are after me.”
Sam rolls his eyes and Bobby shakes his head.
“Idjit,” he says. Then his own palm goes against his forehead. “Oh Christ.”
He pats his pockets once more.
“Oh Christ,” he says again, and the boys follow him as he races to the bathroom and rummages through the hamper.
There’s a chequered shirt he pulls out, fumbling it hurriedly. Like he’s a magician, a folded piece of paper appears in his hand.
“Knew I couldn’t have lost it,” he says.
“No, you just almost washed it,” Dean says nonchalantly, leaning against the doorframe. The look Bobby throws him speaks of idiots and morons. Dean chuckles.
“I just don’t get why you couldn’t use technology, Bobby,” Sam says.
Bobby unfolds the piece of paper.
“Scripta manent,” he replies. “The old-timers knew that, boy. Besides, writing helps me think.”
“And copies save a lot of trouble,” Sam says. “Or so the new-timers say.”
Bobby ignores him.
“This is everything I could find on the 66 Seals. We need to be prepared. We need to get supplies. Just in case.”
“What? Hemlock, opium, wormwood, that sort of thing?” Dean says. Can’t help the grin splitting his face in two.
“Something like that.” It comes out hesitant; Bobby’s thinking and the reply seems to be on auto-pilot.
“So, is getting them a problem?” Sam asks, wiggling his head forward, as if the move itself could drag Bobby out of whatever thoughts he got lost into.
Bobby lifts his head.
“If I get them from one supplier only, yes. Or if I get them from people who know each other; they might get suspicious. They’ll talk. We need to keep this quiet, boys. For now.”
“So we go to more suppliers. We could split up and save time,” Sam shrugs. “Problem solved.”
“Guess that can be done,” Bobby scratches his head. “Though they won’t just cough up the goods, Sam, not to just anyone. I got to be there for the trading.”
Dean puts his palms together with a clap, rubs them.
“Right,” he says. “And we’re coming along for the ride. Let’s go.”
.:::.
It’s been four days on the road and this is their last supplier. Place is a junkyard one state away, looking so eerily like Bobby’s that Dean wonders if all junkyards come out in one design. In a way, it’s comforting. Comforting to be standing under a darkening blue sky, hands on his waist, looking around him, thinking that if junkyards are alike, then maybe there are more Bobbies in this world.
There probably are. Dean’s already spotted the slight move behind a ground floor window pane, which means that they have been detected, too.
“Just one more thing,” Bobby says, palm resting on the hood of the Impala. He seems at ease. Dean eases with him. “If he comes out? Don’t let him know you’re Winchesters.”
“Lemme guess,” Sam says. He’s leaning against the dusty black metal of the car. When he moves, he will leave shiny blackness in one clean sweep. “Dad had another falling out with someone?”
“Something like that,” Bobby says, already moving towards the faded blue steps of the house. “You stay here, the both of you.”
When Bobby reaches the porch, the door is already opening. Dean squints, convinced that the man will look like Bobby’s long lost brother, but the inside of the house is too dark, and all he makes out is the nondescript shape of a long lean figure. Bobby enters the darkness. The door closes.
Sam lets out something between a huff and a chuckle.
“What?” Dean snaps. He’s been on edge the last weeks. The only relative peace he remembers is sitting on a park bench, watching kids play, hearing Castiel talk about works of art and how that mattered. The only relative peace was looking at Bobby’s house grow bigger as the Impala swallowed the distance and somehow it felt like getting back home. He doesn’t have that peace with Sam. He tries. But it’s been so hard since Rock Ridge. So hard since Halloween.
“Nothing,” Sam replies. “Was just thinking about Dad. How he managed to piss off anyone around him.”
“Sam,” Dean says. It doesn’t come out through clenched teeth, but it carries enough of a warning, enough of a don’t start to have Sam frown at him. He’s been thinking a lot about Dad lately. There’s the Apocalypse and the constant fighting of the good fight, and worry, so much worry gnawing at his bones that should leave no margin for any other thought, but the thought still leaks through. There are reminders everywhere, from time-travelling, to Dad’s notes, to Castiel bringing him up, to dreaded memories of his time in Hell. Reminders scratching at a wound that never really healed.
“What?” Sam shrugs. “It’s not like Dad would win a Miss Congeniality contest anytime soon.”
“Sam.”
Sam stands up, metal shiny where he’d been sitting. He pats at his backside, quick moves, and then his palms are open in front of him. Placating. Asking. Dean’s already moved away, crossing the distance to the car driver’s door.
“What?” he says. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way, Dean, all I’m saying’s that…”
“I don’t wanna hear it, Sam.” He’s already opened the door. “Not now. Not from you.”
Sam arches his eyebrows, leans his arms against the roof of the Impala.
“This is not about Dad, is it?”
“What’s not about Dad?” Bobby asks. He’s holding a big paper bag.
“Nothing.”
Dean’s already started the engine. There is the noise of two more doors closing and then they are moving away from the junkyard, away from the blue sky, away from anything resembling peace.
“I got everything we need, thanks for asking,” Bobby says after a while.
“Sorry, Bobby,” Dean says. He makes a vague gesture in the air, as if that explained everything.
“Is this about your discussion ‘bout John? And his diplomatic skills with other hunters?” Bobby asks.
“Yes,” Dean says.
“No,” Sam replies at the same time.
Dean holds his gaze through the rear view mirror, safe in the straight road ahead of him. In the back seat, Sam sighs as if giving in.
“I just mentioned how Dad had a tendency to piss people off. Hell, Bobby, even you pulled a shotgun on him.”
“If you don’t have a shotgun ready, you don’t take on John Winchester, son. Unless you’re suicidal.”
Dean smiles. Sam pulls himself closer to the front seats.
“But the point is he did piss people off. You, Daniel Elkins…”
Bobby’s voice turns razor-sharp.
“That’s different. Just cause he had a terrible temper don’t mean he was always in the wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“With me? I was in the right. With Elkins? Your daddy was.”
“So?”
“So Elkins was damned lucky he got to live for as long as he did. But this isn’t a story I’m going to tell you.”
“Why not?” Sam asks. In the rear view mirror Dean watches his brother looking questioningly at him.
“Qui enim mortuus est iustificatus est a peccato.”
Sam’s lips move silently for a moment working out the translation.
“For he that is dead is freed from sin?”
“Paul to Romans 6:7,” Bobby says. Sam quirks his eyebrows, mouth tugging downwards.
“What?” Bobby says. “I’m not just another pretty face.”
“But Bobby…”
“Dean,” Bobby says. “That was a long time ago. Elkins is dead. John is gone. Point is your daddy was a stubborn badass mule. And he loved you.”
Sam lets out a chuckle that could be a sob. Dean doesn’t dare look in the rear view mirror. Something wants to break free of his chest.
Bobby’s hand pats Dean’s thigh in silent understanding.
“Now shut up, the both of you. Next thing I know we’ll be holding hands and singing Kumbaya,” Bobby says. He twists and turns, angling his body comfortably against the seat, then he pulls his cap over his eyes. “Wake me up when we get home. ”
The road keeps on going. Night falls around them.
.:::.
Dean doesn’t want to read through old dusty tomes anymore than he’d like his teeth ripped out, but he knows he has to. He has to understand for himself the lore Bobby has been digging through. Has to understand about the Apocalypse and angels and about the tests the Almighty seems so fond of handing out.
He wonders if maybe his father’s whole life was a test in itself, like the biblical Job. A test so cruel that it would turn a sweet, hopeful young man into the weary, angry man Dean grew up to worship. He is pretty certain that, unlike Job, his father had cursed God over and over again. Dean doesn’t think he can blame him.
John’s there, always there, crawling beneath the carpet of Dean’s thought, hiding in the shadows of his mind, coursing through his veins, images of a younger, different self superimposed on the father/hunter one. It’s always there. The ache. The need. The love. The curiosity. And Dean can’t help it. It’s like an aching tooth his tongue can’t stop prodding.
He can hear Sam’s even breath on the couch. Envies the deep sleep his brother carries.
Sam tried again. Tried to explain about his powers, tried to make things right. Asked him about Hell. He’s more persistent in his questions now, as if there’s something he needs to find out, but Dean can’t answer him. Answering means remembering and Dean’s not ready to go there yet.
He thinks of his father instead, how anger gave him fuel, how family the spark to do whatever he had to do. Set the devil on fire.
He props his temples against the heels of his palms, wishes his father was there. He would understand about Hell, he would tell him what to do. Show him a way to keep Sam safe. Keep the world safe.
The room feels small.
When Castiel appears, Dean’s taking big gulps of crisp air on Bobby’s porch, looking at the night sky.
“My dad,” Dean asks. His arms are wrapped around his knees. “My mom... are they in Heaven? Are they together?”
He can’t make out Castiel’s gaze in the dark.
“Is there really a Heaven, Castiel?”
Castiel takes one step forward.
“What do you think, Dean?”
“If there’s Hell, then there’s got to be Heaven.”
One more step.
“Don’t lose focus,” Castiel says. “You need to stay sharp, Dean.”
“I know,” Dean says. “But it isn’t easy. You… you take your orders from your own Father, you said so. Me? I don’t have that privilege. All calls are mine.”
A slight wind has started to rise. The clouds move to the same pace, ignoring it. Castiel sits beside him.
“I did not send you backwards in time to confound you. I sent you to understand.”
“And I do. I get my dad, Castiel. I understand his doubt and his anger and how he was weary to the bone. And I understand Hell and who he was and who my mother was and who they could be before… before all this happened.”
Castiel sighs. It sounds surprisingly human in its weariness.
“Whatever you question, you cannot question your fight. And your fight is not about preserving Heaven. It is about preserving Earth. The here. The now. It matters. Would telling you what happened with Daniel Elkins help you focus?”
Dean turns his head, looks at the angel looking at him.
“I don’t know.”
Castiel reaches out with two fingers towards his face and Dean flinches back.
“Whoa,” he says. “Not another time trip, is it?”
“No,” Castiel says. “You will simply… watch.”
“What, like Scrooge?”
Castiel remains impassive, fingers still outstretched.
“Scrooge? From the Muppet Christmas Carol? It’s a classic… the… never mind,” Dean sighs, bringing his face closer. “Just do it.”
Yes.
.:::.
Daniel Elkins’s always been special. Not as special as his mother, who died crazy listening to voices only she could hear, screaming prophecies of beasts that walked the earth in human guise. Not as special as his great-uncle, who died 100 years old and never lost his gunslinger eyes. Not as special as his great-great-great-grandfather, who helped Samuel Colt build the Gun that Can Kill Anything and was the first to carry it. But special enough. Special enough to be the last of his line. The last Keeper of the Colt. Special enough to see.
Because Daniel Elkins can see. Has always been able to see what others missed. Or dreaded.
He grows up a solitary man. He’s a loner, a miserable son of a bitch living the hermit, lone wolf life of all hunters, but it is not by choice, but necessity. Daniel Elkins can see. He can see auras and auras don’t hide many secrets. He can spot vampires miles away, because their aura is like a wailing siren of wrong to him. He kills every single evil thing he can lay his hands on. He keeps the Colt safe.
In 1973, a young man breaks into his house. Daniel draws a shotgun at him, but the man’s aura is strange, shimmering and pure like that of a child, simultaneously smooth and jagged, like ice with something dark trapped in it. It is like no human aura he’s ever seen before, but it is unlike any evil being he’s ever encountered and he knows the truth when he sees it. He lets him go.
The strange thief never lies. Daniel retrieves the Colt days later at the Campbells’.
Years later, on a hunt, he meets a young hunter named John Winchester. They’re both after the same nest of vampires, but John Winchester is still fresh and knows the wrong lore. Daniel Elkins saves his life. He sees John’s aura, reads pain and loss and anger and vengeance. Sees steel that promises a good hunter. So he takes him under his wing. Teaches him how to organize his knowledge and leave secret signs that other hunters will understand. Hears John’s tale of woe, John’s desire to end the thing that killed his wife. John talks about his two sons, staying with a Pastor Jim for a while, and when he talks about them his aura is no longer a violent red but an easier, softer hue, like rose petals. And Daniel’s thinking that maybe he’s found the next Keeper. Someone who needs a little more time on the battlefield, more smoke and scars, and Daniel leaves subtle clues, tiny hints that will lead John to the right direction, to the right sources, talking of a Gun that Can Kill Anything. By the time John finds out enough to seek it, he’ll be ready to hold the Colt, to earn his vengeance and become the next Keeper. Daniel will make sure of that.
John comes and goes on hunts. He learns like a sponge and covers Daniel’s back like a true soldier. Sometimes, when whisky gives him the right cadence of thought, he talks of his sons, how they’ve grown, how they stay at uncle Bobby’s or Pastor Jim’s again. John tries to keep them out of the hunts as much as they can, because they are only children, and his aura goes a deep crimson of sorrow.
Sometimes, when he’s hit the right cadence too, Daniel talks about how it is to see. John doesn’t question it. And it’s good. Good to care for someone again. Good to think of peers and friends and family.
Then, one day, when the snow’s covering Manning, John shows up at Daniel’s door with his children asleep, strapped in the back seat of his big black car. And Daniel understands that he’s passed a test somehow, a test that allowed John to trust him and bring his children in his presence. Something that puts him in the same position as Bobby and Pastor Jim. It should have been a glorious moment. A moment of family that Daniel hadn’t had in years. A moment that would make the world a less lonely, less dark place to be.
He stands rooted in place. Because he can see. He can see, even behind the metal and the glass of the car.
The young one carries darkness in his smooth child aura. The other… the other he has seen before. As a grown up.
“Let them be in the car, John,” Daniel says, feeling his own heart breaking, but John’s aura remains open as he walks towards him.
“What’s the matter, Danny?”
Daniel grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, pushes him against the wall.
“These your sons?”
John pushes him away, but Daniel hangs on.
“These your sons?”
“Christo,” John says, but Daniel doesn’t flinch.
“These your sons?”
“Yes, Danny, what the hell’s gotten into you?” This time John does push him away. His aura erupts into shards of violence.
“Unnatural, John,” Elkins says and can hardly keep the sob down, but he’s a hunter and he’s a Keeper and he can see, and he can’t flinch from duty. “Unnatural. I never forget an aura, John, it’s like a fingerprint. And I never read an aura wrong. Your sons, John, your boys. They are unnatural. They’re an abnormality, I know it’s hard but you’ve got to…”
But John doesn’t have to do anything. His fist shoots out, connects with Elkins’ jaw, sends him sprawling on the dirty snow.
“We’re even,” John says. “You saved my life once, Elkins, and now I’m sparing yours. But if you come near me and my boys again, if you so much as talk about them, you’re a dead man.”
He doesn’t look back when he leaves.
“Keep your eyes open, John!” Daniel cries after him. “Be careful and keep your eyes open.”
But the car’s already burning rubber.
Daniel never tells him about the Colt. He wraps himself in more silence, more solitude, more hunting. When enough time has passed for the bruise on his face to heal, he writes a letter to J.W. and keeps it in the safe. He follows rumours on John Winchester and his boys, and when he hears of a fire that almost kills John’s youngest, he cries and hopes that he’ll never have to use the Colt on John’s boys. Through his tears, he can’t see any auras at all. For a while, that is comforting.
.:::.
When Dean opens his eyes again, Castiel is watching him with the curious glance of someone not in total grip with humanity.
Dean stands up, passes a palm tiredly over his face.
“How’s that supposed to make me focus, Cas, huh? I’m unnatural? Me and Sammy both?”
“No,” Castiel replies. He leans his elbows against his thighs, tilts his head upwards to look at Dean. “I could heal all of your scars, but some psychic stamp remains on you. I left my mark on you. Daniel remembered it. Remembered you. As for your brother, you already knew he was… special. The demon blood.”
“But…” Dean’s frown is followed by a heave of his chest. “If you hadn’t sent me back, if I hadn’t meddled with the timeline Elkins wouldn’t have held out, and we’d have the Colt sooner… if I hadn’t tried saving my parents…”
He digs the heels of his palms on the sides of his face, closes his eyes. Feels an oncoming headache, as sharp as a panic attack.
He opens his eyes because Castiel is standing in front of him, gently pulling his hands down.
“Dean,” he says. “All roads lead to the same destination. This does not matter.”
The night feels merciless.
“Why couldn’t you have stopped it? All of it?” He’s asked this before, but he’s tired. So tired.
“I have told you. We haven’t walked among you in two thousand years. We have only watched.”
“Wrong kind of watching,” Dean says. “You watched us. You should have watched over us.”
Castiel shoves his hands in his pockets.
“We did. We found the hex bag.”
“I’m talking about before. About everyone. About everything.”
“You don’t want to hear how the Lord works in mysterious ways, Dean.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
“We do what we have to,” Castiel says. “Your father always knew that.”
There’s respect in his voice.
“You like my dad,” Dean says. It stuns him.
“He was a soldier. I understand him.”
“He was my father,” Dean says. Castiel nods. “You didn’t let me see this to put my mind at ease, did you?”
“You are much like your father, Dean. You make your choice and you stick by it. You’ll have to make more. Your father knew that Daniel Elkins was speaking the truth. But he made his choice. And Daniel Elkins never went after you, even though he believed that something wasn’t right. A lot of people, and a lot of choices got you in this place at this time. You need to focus and make the most of it. Here. Now. That’s what matters.”
“Mysterious ways again, huh?”
There is no reply. Castiel’s already gone.
Sam’s standing in the doorway, Ruby’s knife catching light in his hand. He sheaths it when he sees his brother.
“Dean, what are you doing out here freezing your balls off?”
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Remember that time Dad took us on a trip to meet a friend of his, but when we woke up we were again at Bobby’s?”
“You mean that time Dad actually spent Christmas with us?”
“Yeah, that time.”
“Yeah, why?”
Dean shrugs.
“Nothing.”
He almost wishes for snow. Sam pulls him back inside, and the sibling trajectory is familiar, so familiar.
“Dude, you’ll catch your death.”
“Been there done that,” Dean replies and when Sam thumps him on the back of his head, Dean just turns, wraps his arms around him and hangs on.
-The End.
What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.
~Friedrich Nietzsche
SIDENOTE: So. Lovely may7fic sent a detailed outline of what she wanted. Her tagline was: Maybe, just maybe, John falling out with the other hunters wasn’t always his fault. It started out with our boys and Bobby needing something from a supplier, but they boys had to keep their identity in secret because the supplier had a fallout with John Winchester, and somehow in this discussion Sam would say how John did that a lot with fellow hunters and Dean got pissed off at that. And then it involved flashbacks of Bobby narrating about that time when an increasingly obsessed Elkins crossed a line that John couldn't forgive, and John never did forgive that. I tried to keep this frame, cuz a) I loved the idea and b) I really, really, really want to keep may7fic happy (I’m an awesome minion that way), but I couldn’t have Elkins be such a son of a bitch, because I remembered that John had called Elkins a good man when he had read the letter revealing about the Colt in that vampire episode. So I needed something that would make John part ways with him, but something that in the long run John could forgive. So I tweaked. And because the new season is so freaking awesome I just had to tie it in. And somehow it became a fic not (just) about John, but about Dean’s relationship with John, and Dean’s current state and Dean’s general glorious fucked-upness. *gets headache*
Oh, and Castiel. *insert fluttery heart here*
I tried my best to stay close to everything you told me, love. I hope you don’t mind the tweaking. *bites nails*
TITLE: What was silent
AUTHOR:ultraviolet9a
SPOILER: stretches from pre-series up to 4.07
GENRE: Gen
CHARACTERS: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer, John Winchester, Daniel Elkins, Castiel
SUMMARY: Like father, like son.
RATING: PG13. Just cussing, really.
FEEDBACK: Dude…duh.
DISCLAIMER: Don’t own, no profit, don’t sue.
NOTE: sweet charity fic. may7fic is crazy awesome and bought me. She wanted a story about John’s fallout with Elkins (that affects the boys up to the present) and she wanted some shiny sent John’s way and she wanted the Dean-John father-son thing in all its Winchester glory. I tried to stay close to that, but I tweaked it. A lot. Because I wanted Castiel, too. Amongst others. And wanted season 4 involved as well. Ahem.
BETA: All the pretty polishing I couldn’t have done without the shiny beta of the sparkly chemm80 and the amazing erinrua . Much love to e313for the handholding as well. Thank you, shiny ladies.
Bobby’s lifting stacks and stacks of books. The dust still flutters in the air, caught unaware in the draughts of Bobby’s whirlwind moves. It’s disconcerting, really, the whole whirlwind thing. If Bobby was a force of nature, he’d be something steady and unyielding, like a mountain, or a glacier. Something with deep roots, close to the ground, bearing weight. Living with it. Something with fewer moves, but heavier momentum.
He’s moving stacks around, freeing long lost surfaces of furniture, all the while grumbling “I’m sure it’s here somewhere”. One book is balancing on the edge, forming the top of a paper tower. Dean shoves his hands deeper in his pockets and watches it lose the fight with gravity.
Sam’s hand shoots out, grabs it midair, places it on top again, using his thigh to keep another book tower steady.
“Are you sure, Bobby?” Sam, the human book prop, says. “You sure it’s not somewhere else?”
“No.” It comes through gritted teeth. “If you say you ain’t got it, it’s here alright. It’s got to be here.”
“I can help you,” Sam says.
“No!” Bobby says. “You don’t know the system.”
“There’s an actual system?!”
“Just cuz you don’t get it, don’t mean it ain’t one,” Bobby says, and Dean keeps on looking. At the books. At his brother. Sam’s eyes have green bleeding into brown in the sunlight. Specks of gold like the dust hanging in the air. Specks. Just specks, is all. Dean lowers his head.
He feels Bobby grow still, no longer a whirlwind. Hears it in his voice, asking “You alright there, Dean?”
Dean uses his smile, the one he knows could shame a million suns.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I mean, if we count out the freaking Apocalypse and me almost dying….again…” He shrugs. “It’s all good.”
“You’ve been restless in your sleep,” Sam says. There’s a question there. It asks of Hell. Dean can’t answer how Hell is made of gold and yellow these days.
“I’m having nightmares,” he says, licking his upper lip. “It involves Chihuahuas. And they are after me.”
Sam rolls his eyes and Bobby shakes his head.
“Idjit,” he says. Then his own palm goes against his forehead. “Oh Christ.”
He pats his pockets once more.
“Oh Christ,” he says again, and the boys follow him as he races to the bathroom and rummages through the hamper.
There’s a chequered shirt he pulls out, fumbling it hurriedly. Like he’s a magician, a folded piece of paper appears in his hand.
“Knew I couldn’t have lost it,” he says.
“No, you just almost washed it,” Dean says nonchalantly, leaning against the doorframe. The look Bobby throws him speaks of idiots and morons. Dean chuckles.
“I just don’t get why you couldn’t use technology, Bobby,” Sam says.
Bobby unfolds the piece of paper.
“Scripta manent,” he replies. “The old-timers knew that, boy. Besides, writing helps me think.”
“And copies save a lot of trouble,” Sam says. “Or so the new-timers say.”
Bobby ignores him.
“This is everything I could find on the 66 Seals. We need to be prepared. We need to get supplies. Just in case.”
“What? Hemlock, opium, wormwood, that sort of thing?” Dean says. Can’t help the grin splitting his face in two.
“Something like that.” It comes out hesitant; Bobby’s thinking and the reply seems to be on auto-pilot.
“So, is getting them a problem?” Sam asks, wiggling his head forward, as if the move itself could drag Bobby out of whatever thoughts he got lost into.
Bobby lifts his head.
“If I get them from one supplier only, yes. Or if I get them from people who know each other; they might get suspicious. They’ll talk. We need to keep this quiet, boys. For now.”
“So we go to more suppliers. We could split up and save time,” Sam shrugs. “Problem solved.”
“Guess that can be done,” Bobby scratches his head. “Though they won’t just cough up the goods, Sam, not to just anyone. I got to be there for the trading.”
Dean puts his palms together with a clap, rubs them.
“Right,” he says. “And we’re coming along for the ride. Let’s go.”
.:::.
It’s been four days on the road and this is their last supplier. Place is a junkyard one state away, looking so eerily like Bobby’s that Dean wonders if all junkyards come out in one design. In a way, it’s comforting. Comforting to be standing under a darkening blue sky, hands on his waist, looking around him, thinking that if junkyards are alike, then maybe there are more Bobbies in this world.
There probably are. Dean’s already spotted the slight move behind a ground floor window pane, which means that they have been detected, too.
“Just one more thing,” Bobby says, palm resting on the hood of the Impala. He seems at ease. Dean eases with him. “If he comes out? Don’t let him know you’re Winchesters.”
“Lemme guess,” Sam says. He’s leaning against the dusty black metal of the car. When he moves, he will leave shiny blackness in one clean sweep. “Dad had another falling out with someone?”
“Something like that,” Bobby says, already moving towards the faded blue steps of the house. “You stay here, the both of you.”
When Bobby reaches the porch, the door is already opening. Dean squints, convinced that the man will look like Bobby’s long lost brother, but the inside of the house is too dark, and all he makes out is the nondescript shape of a long lean figure. Bobby enters the darkness. The door closes.
Sam lets out something between a huff and a chuckle.
“What?” Dean snaps. He’s been on edge the last weeks. The only relative peace he remembers is sitting on a park bench, watching kids play, hearing Castiel talk about works of art and how that mattered. The only relative peace was looking at Bobby’s house grow bigger as the Impala swallowed the distance and somehow it felt like getting back home. He doesn’t have that peace with Sam. He tries. But it’s been so hard since Rock Ridge. So hard since Halloween.
“Nothing,” Sam replies. “Was just thinking about Dad. How he managed to piss off anyone around him.”
“Sam,” Dean says. It doesn’t come out through clenched teeth, but it carries enough of a warning, enough of a don’t start to have Sam frown at him. He’s been thinking a lot about Dad lately. There’s the Apocalypse and the constant fighting of the good fight, and worry, so much worry gnawing at his bones that should leave no margin for any other thought, but the thought still leaks through. There are reminders everywhere, from time-travelling, to Dad’s notes, to Castiel bringing him up, to dreaded memories of his time in Hell. Reminders scratching at a wound that never really healed.
“What?” Sam shrugs. “It’s not like Dad would win a Miss Congeniality contest anytime soon.”
“Sam.”
Sam stands up, metal shiny where he’d been sitting. He pats at his backside, quick moves, and then his palms are open in front of him. Placating. Asking. Dean’s already moved away, crossing the distance to the car driver’s door.
“What?” he says. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way, Dean, all I’m saying’s that…”
“I don’t wanna hear it, Sam.” He’s already opened the door. “Not now. Not from you.”
Sam arches his eyebrows, leans his arms against the roof of the Impala.
“This is not about Dad, is it?”
“What’s not about Dad?” Bobby asks. He’s holding a big paper bag.
“Nothing.”
Dean’s already started the engine. There is the noise of two more doors closing and then they are moving away from the junkyard, away from the blue sky, away from anything resembling peace.
“I got everything we need, thanks for asking,” Bobby says after a while.
“Sorry, Bobby,” Dean says. He makes a vague gesture in the air, as if that explained everything.
“Is this about your discussion ‘bout John? And his diplomatic skills with other hunters?” Bobby asks.
“Yes,” Dean says.
“No,” Sam replies at the same time.
Dean holds his gaze through the rear view mirror, safe in the straight road ahead of him. In the back seat, Sam sighs as if giving in.
“I just mentioned how Dad had a tendency to piss people off. Hell, Bobby, even you pulled a shotgun on him.”
“If you don’t have a shotgun ready, you don’t take on John Winchester, son. Unless you’re suicidal.”
Dean smiles. Sam pulls himself closer to the front seats.
“But the point is he did piss people off. You, Daniel Elkins…”
Bobby’s voice turns razor-sharp.
“That’s different. Just cause he had a terrible temper don’t mean he was always in the wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“With me? I was in the right. With Elkins? Your daddy was.”
“So?”
“So Elkins was damned lucky he got to live for as long as he did. But this isn’t a story I’m going to tell you.”
“Why not?” Sam asks. In the rear view mirror Dean watches his brother looking questioningly at him.
“Qui enim mortuus est iustificatus est a peccato.”
Sam’s lips move silently for a moment working out the translation.
“For he that is dead is freed from sin?”
“Paul to Romans 6:7,” Bobby says. Sam quirks his eyebrows, mouth tugging downwards.
“What?” Bobby says. “I’m not just another pretty face.”
“But Bobby…”
“Dean,” Bobby says. “That was a long time ago. Elkins is dead. John is gone. Point is your daddy was a stubborn badass mule. And he loved you.”
Sam lets out a chuckle that could be a sob. Dean doesn’t dare look in the rear view mirror. Something wants to break free of his chest.
Bobby’s hand pats Dean’s thigh in silent understanding.
“Now shut up, the both of you. Next thing I know we’ll be holding hands and singing Kumbaya,” Bobby says. He twists and turns, angling his body comfortably against the seat, then he pulls his cap over his eyes. “Wake me up when we get home. ”
The road keeps on going. Night falls around them.
.:::.
Dean doesn’t want to read through old dusty tomes anymore than he’d like his teeth ripped out, but he knows he has to. He has to understand for himself the lore Bobby has been digging through. Has to understand about the Apocalypse and angels and about the tests the Almighty seems so fond of handing out.
He wonders if maybe his father’s whole life was a test in itself, like the biblical Job. A test so cruel that it would turn a sweet, hopeful young man into the weary, angry man Dean grew up to worship. He is pretty certain that, unlike Job, his father had cursed God over and over again. Dean doesn’t think he can blame him.
John’s there, always there, crawling beneath the carpet of Dean’s thought, hiding in the shadows of his mind, coursing through his veins, images of a younger, different self superimposed on the father/hunter one. It’s always there. The ache. The need. The love. The curiosity. And Dean can’t help it. It’s like an aching tooth his tongue can’t stop prodding.
He can hear Sam’s even breath on the couch. Envies the deep sleep his brother carries.
Sam tried again. Tried to explain about his powers, tried to make things right. Asked him about Hell. He’s more persistent in his questions now, as if there’s something he needs to find out, but Dean can’t answer him. Answering means remembering and Dean’s not ready to go there yet.
He thinks of his father instead, how anger gave him fuel, how family the spark to do whatever he had to do. Set the devil on fire.
He props his temples against the heels of his palms, wishes his father was there. He would understand about Hell, he would tell him what to do. Show him a way to keep Sam safe. Keep the world safe.
The room feels small.
When Castiel appears, Dean’s taking big gulps of crisp air on Bobby’s porch, looking at the night sky.
“My dad,” Dean asks. His arms are wrapped around his knees. “My mom... are they in Heaven? Are they together?”
He can’t make out Castiel’s gaze in the dark.
“Is there really a Heaven, Castiel?”
Castiel takes one step forward.
“What do you think, Dean?”
“If there’s Hell, then there’s got to be Heaven.”
One more step.
“Don’t lose focus,” Castiel says. “You need to stay sharp, Dean.”
“I know,” Dean says. “But it isn’t easy. You… you take your orders from your own Father, you said so. Me? I don’t have that privilege. All calls are mine.”
A slight wind has started to rise. The clouds move to the same pace, ignoring it. Castiel sits beside him.
“I did not send you backwards in time to confound you. I sent you to understand.”
“And I do. I get my dad, Castiel. I understand his doubt and his anger and how he was weary to the bone. And I understand Hell and who he was and who my mother was and who they could be before… before all this happened.”
Castiel sighs. It sounds surprisingly human in its weariness.
“Whatever you question, you cannot question your fight. And your fight is not about preserving Heaven. It is about preserving Earth. The here. The now. It matters. Would telling you what happened with Daniel Elkins help you focus?”
Dean turns his head, looks at the angel looking at him.
“I don’t know.”
Castiel reaches out with two fingers towards his face and Dean flinches back.
“Whoa,” he says. “Not another time trip, is it?”
“No,” Castiel says. “You will simply… watch.”
“What, like Scrooge?”
Castiel remains impassive, fingers still outstretched.
“Scrooge? From the Muppet Christmas Carol? It’s a classic… the… never mind,” Dean sighs, bringing his face closer. “Just do it.”
Yes.
.:::.
Daniel Elkins’s always been special. Not as special as his mother, who died crazy listening to voices only she could hear, screaming prophecies of beasts that walked the earth in human guise. Not as special as his great-uncle, who died 100 years old and never lost his gunslinger eyes. Not as special as his great-great-great-grandfather, who helped Samuel Colt build the Gun that Can Kill Anything and was the first to carry it. But special enough. Special enough to be the last of his line. The last Keeper of the Colt. Special enough to see.
Because Daniel Elkins can see. Has always been able to see what others missed. Or dreaded.
He grows up a solitary man. He’s a loner, a miserable son of a bitch living the hermit, lone wolf life of all hunters, but it is not by choice, but necessity. Daniel Elkins can see. He can see auras and auras don’t hide many secrets. He can spot vampires miles away, because their aura is like a wailing siren of wrong to him. He kills every single evil thing he can lay his hands on. He keeps the Colt safe.
In 1973, a young man breaks into his house. Daniel draws a shotgun at him, but the man’s aura is strange, shimmering and pure like that of a child, simultaneously smooth and jagged, like ice with something dark trapped in it. It is like no human aura he’s ever seen before, but it is unlike any evil being he’s ever encountered and he knows the truth when he sees it. He lets him go.
The strange thief never lies. Daniel retrieves the Colt days later at the Campbells’.
Years later, on a hunt, he meets a young hunter named John Winchester. They’re both after the same nest of vampires, but John Winchester is still fresh and knows the wrong lore. Daniel Elkins saves his life. He sees John’s aura, reads pain and loss and anger and vengeance. Sees steel that promises a good hunter. So he takes him under his wing. Teaches him how to organize his knowledge and leave secret signs that other hunters will understand. Hears John’s tale of woe, John’s desire to end the thing that killed his wife. John talks about his two sons, staying with a Pastor Jim for a while, and when he talks about them his aura is no longer a violent red but an easier, softer hue, like rose petals. And Daniel’s thinking that maybe he’s found the next Keeper. Someone who needs a little more time on the battlefield, more smoke and scars, and Daniel leaves subtle clues, tiny hints that will lead John to the right direction, to the right sources, talking of a Gun that Can Kill Anything. By the time John finds out enough to seek it, he’ll be ready to hold the Colt, to earn his vengeance and become the next Keeper. Daniel will make sure of that.
John comes and goes on hunts. He learns like a sponge and covers Daniel’s back like a true soldier. Sometimes, when whisky gives him the right cadence of thought, he talks of his sons, how they’ve grown, how they stay at uncle Bobby’s or Pastor Jim’s again. John tries to keep them out of the hunts as much as they can, because they are only children, and his aura goes a deep crimson of sorrow.
Sometimes, when he’s hit the right cadence too, Daniel talks about how it is to see. John doesn’t question it. And it’s good. Good to care for someone again. Good to think of peers and friends and family.
Then, one day, when the snow’s covering Manning, John shows up at Daniel’s door with his children asleep, strapped in the back seat of his big black car. And Daniel understands that he’s passed a test somehow, a test that allowed John to trust him and bring his children in his presence. Something that puts him in the same position as Bobby and Pastor Jim. It should have been a glorious moment. A moment of family that Daniel hadn’t had in years. A moment that would make the world a less lonely, less dark place to be.
He stands rooted in place. Because he can see. He can see, even behind the metal and the glass of the car.
The young one carries darkness in his smooth child aura. The other… the other he has seen before. As a grown up.
“Let them be in the car, John,” Daniel says, feeling his own heart breaking, but John’s aura remains open as he walks towards him.
“What’s the matter, Danny?”
Daniel grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, pushes him against the wall.
“These your sons?”
John pushes him away, but Daniel hangs on.
“These your sons?”
“Christo,” John says, but Daniel doesn’t flinch.
“These your sons?”
“Yes, Danny, what the hell’s gotten into you?” This time John does push him away. His aura erupts into shards of violence.
“Unnatural, John,” Elkins says and can hardly keep the sob down, but he’s a hunter and he’s a Keeper and he can see, and he can’t flinch from duty. “Unnatural. I never forget an aura, John, it’s like a fingerprint. And I never read an aura wrong. Your sons, John, your boys. They are unnatural. They’re an abnormality, I know it’s hard but you’ve got to…”
But John doesn’t have to do anything. His fist shoots out, connects with Elkins’ jaw, sends him sprawling on the dirty snow.
“We’re even,” John says. “You saved my life once, Elkins, and now I’m sparing yours. But if you come near me and my boys again, if you so much as talk about them, you’re a dead man.”
He doesn’t look back when he leaves.
“Keep your eyes open, John!” Daniel cries after him. “Be careful and keep your eyes open.”
But the car’s already burning rubber.
Daniel never tells him about the Colt. He wraps himself in more silence, more solitude, more hunting. When enough time has passed for the bruise on his face to heal, he writes a letter to J.W. and keeps it in the safe. He follows rumours on John Winchester and his boys, and when he hears of a fire that almost kills John’s youngest, he cries and hopes that he’ll never have to use the Colt on John’s boys. Through his tears, he can’t see any auras at all. For a while, that is comforting.
.:::.
When Dean opens his eyes again, Castiel is watching him with the curious glance of someone not in total grip with humanity.
Dean stands up, passes a palm tiredly over his face.
“How’s that supposed to make me focus, Cas, huh? I’m unnatural? Me and Sammy both?”
“No,” Castiel replies. He leans his elbows against his thighs, tilts his head upwards to look at Dean. “I could heal all of your scars, but some psychic stamp remains on you. I left my mark on you. Daniel remembered it. Remembered you. As for your brother, you already knew he was… special. The demon blood.”
“But…” Dean’s frown is followed by a heave of his chest. “If you hadn’t sent me back, if I hadn’t meddled with the timeline Elkins wouldn’t have held out, and we’d have the Colt sooner… if I hadn’t tried saving my parents…”
He digs the heels of his palms on the sides of his face, closes his eyes. Feels an oncoming headache, as sharp as a panic attack.
He opens his eyes because Castiel is standing in front of him, gently pulling his hands down.
“Dean,” he says. “All roads lead to the same destination. This does not matter.”
The night feels merciless.
“Why couldn’t you have stopped it? All of it?” He’s asked this before, but he’s tired. So tired.
“I have told you. We haven’t walked among you in two thousand years. We have only watched.”
“Wrong kind of watching,” Dean says. “You watched us. You should have watched over us.”
Castiel shoves his hands in his pockets.
“We did. We found the hex bag.”
“I’m talking about before. About everyone. About everything.”
“You don’t want to hear how the Lord works in mysterious ways, Dean.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
“We do what we have to,” Castiel says. “Your father always knew that.”
There’s respect in his voice.
“You like my dad,” Dean says. It stuns him.
“He was a soldier. I understand him.”
“He was my father,” Dean says. Castiel nods. “You didn’t let me see this to put my mind at ease, did you?”
“You are much like your father, Dean. You make your choice and you stick by it. You’ll have to make more. Your father knew that Daniel Elkins was speaking the truth. But he made his choice. And Daniel Elkins never went after you, even though he believed that something wasn’t right. A lot of people, and a lot of choices got you in this place at this time. You need to focus and make the most of it. Here. Now. That’s what matters.”
“Mysterious ways again, huh?”
There is no reply. Castiel’s already gone.
Sam’s standing in the doorway, Ruby’s knife catching light in his hand. He sheaths it when he sees his brother.
“Dean, what are you doing out here freezing your balls off?”
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Remember that time Dad took us on a trip to meet a friend of his, but when we woke up we were again at Bobby’s?”
“You mean that time Dad actually spent Christmas with us?”
“Yeah, that time.”
“Yeah, why?”
Dean shrugs.
“Nothing.”
He almost wishes for snow. Sam pulls him back inside, and the sibling trajectory is familiar, so familiar.
“Dude, you’ll catch your death.”
“Been there done that,” Dean replies and when Sam thumps him on the back of his head, Dean just turns, wraps his arms around him and hangs on.
-The End.
What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.
~Friedrich Nietzsche
SIDENOTE: So. Lovely may7fic sent a detailed outline of what she wanted. Her tagline was: Maybe, just maybe, John falling out with the other hunters wasn’t always his fault. It started out with our boys and Bobby needing something from a supplier, but they boys had to keep their identity in secret because the supplier had a fallout with John Winchester, and somehow in this discussion Sam would say how John did that a lot with fellow hunters and Dean got pissed off at that. And then it involved flashbacks of Bobby narrating about that time when an increasingly obsessed Elkins crossed a line that John couldn't forgive, and John never did forgive that. I tried to keep this frame, cuz a) I loved the idea and b) I really, really, really want to keep may7fic happy (I’m an awesome minion that way), but I couldn’t have Elkins be such a son of a bitch, because I remembered that John had called Elkins a good man when he had read the letter revealing about the Colt in that vampire episode. So I needed something that would make John part ways with him, but something that in the long run John could forgive. So I tweaked. And because the new season is so freaking awesome I just had to tie it in. And somehow it became a fic not (just) about John, but about Dean’s relationship with John, and Dean’s current state and Dean’s general glorious fucked-upness. *gets headache*
Oh, and Castiel. *insert fluttery heart here*
I tried my best to stay close to everything you told me, love. I hope you don’t mind the tweaking. *bites nails*