HC Bingo - Prompt 13
Title: So Sad About Me
Prompt: rent boys/girls
Medium: fic
Rating: Hard R
Warnings: mentions of child abuse, child rape, disturbing images
Summary: One afternoon - John sent Dean to the store to get dinner - he wouldn't come back to his family for three years.
John kept thinking it was a dream - the same dream he'd been having for the past three years. The dream of Dean being found - now the dream was real and he was driving as fast he could for a hospital in Chicago. He'd left Sammy with Pastor Jim in Blue Earth. He'd go get Dean, come back to the Pastor's house and they'd all figure out how to be a family again. There'd been something in the way the doctor on the phone had spoken to him that told John that something was very wrong with his little boy - so bad that he was told that it would be better to hear it in person. As the Impala ate up the highway, the motor rumbling like thunder, John relived that terrible day that things fell apart.
He'd come back from a hunt far to exhausted to pack his boys into the car and head for the next town - even though it was one in the afternoon. He'd taken a nap, woken up around four to find his boys watching cartoons. A quick perusal of the supplies he left them showed nothing but peanut butter and tuna. So John had given his eldest five dollars and told him to go the supermarket on the next block and pick up a package of hot dogs and some buns. Ten years old at the time, John knew the boy could make it to the store and back in thirty minutes - forty five at the most if he managed to get into the line where some old lady with fifty coupons and bad eyesight wanted to fight with the clerk. While he was gone, John would take a shower and when Dean got back, they'd have some dinner and get mostly packed. He'd take another quick nap - telling his eldest to wake him up at ten, and then they'd leave town.
No dilly, no dally - no problem.
With the five dollars in the pocket of his jeans, Dean had left and John, checking on Sammy one more time - though all his youngest wanted was to be left alone while the Ninja Turtles foiled the Shredder's latest evil plan. John fully expected to come out of the bathroom and find his eldest already busy cooking the family's dinner and listening to Sammy whine about the ever-present Spegettios. John had read somewhere that there was a serving of vegetables in a serving of the pasta, and growing boys needed to get their vegetables somehow. What he expected and what he got were two very, very different things. At first, it seemed as if his assumption of the long line was right when the half hour clicked past - but when Jeopardy gave way to the six o'clock news and the news gave way to Wheel of Fortune, John started to worry. When the evening sit-coms started, fear started to kick in. Dean was not the type of kid to wander off or run away. He cooked a can of pasta for Sam, who was starting to look pensive as well. The rest of the night was a blur in his memory.
Two days later and ready to tear his hair out, John finally had gotten his answer via the corner market security cameras and the local police. Some sick fuck in a red conversion van had snatched his eldest from the store's parking lot and, as the van had no plates - left very little for the police to go on. The place was close enough to the highway that it was a fair bet that Dean was miles away by now. Utterly heartbroken, John had packed their things up in the Impala and he and Sam had left. John now had two bastards to hunt. The demon who killed Mary and the monster that took his boy.
The second alarm bell rang in John's mind when he saw the cops standing outside several rooms in the pediatric ward. It was his experience that this was not normal. The one stationed outside Dean's room asked for John's ID before he would even let him look into the room. Patience was his friend right now, even though what he wanted to do was shove the cop across the hallway so he could see his son.
The officer whose name plate read 'Reynolds' leaned into the room. “Dean, your father is here.”
John stepped into the room and instantly thought there had to be some kind of mistake. The boy in the bed was thin - to thin - even from across the room he could see that the kid was practically swimming in the Johnny shirt was wearing. The kid was also taller than Dean - but he's not ten years old anymore - a garish bruise marred one side of the kid's face and his hair, while fair, was bluntly cut as if he did it himself with a steak knife. He was at the foot of the bed when the boy finally looked up at him and John's stomach fell to his feet. The bruise hid the dusting of freckles on one side but it was in the boy's brilliantly colored green eyes - eyes that had haunted his dreams for he didn't know how many nights - the eyes told him the truth. “Dean?”
Dean blinked blankly at his father, feeling his cheeks slowly turn pink in shame. A lot had happened in the three years since he'd been grabbed in that parking lot. He wasn't worth much anymore. “Yes?”
John sat down in the chair next to the bed, not certain of what other injuries his boy had. “They tell you I was coming?”
“Yes, sir.” Dean curled up, resting his chin on his knees.
“I don't know how long they want to keep you here. But we'll go as soon as we can, okay?”
Dean turned his head to the side, looking at his father. The sheer misery he felt was reflected in his eyes “Where's Sammy?”
“He's at Pastor Jim's. I didn't want to bring him down here with me... I figured you needed some time.” John let a long breath. “I wish I could tell you that everything is going to be fine... but...” He shook his head. “Just going to have to take it one day at a time.”
Dean nodded in reply and straighted up slightly when a nurse came in carrying a tray.
“Lunch time!” She said in a cheery voice and busied herself setting things up on the table that swung over the bed. “You just take your time with that, there's no rush.”
“Thank you.” Dean replied quietly as the woman left the room. He stared down at the plate for a moment, almost in prayer, before reaching for his fork.
John felt the most unsettling thing was the fact that Dean wouldn't look him in the eye. This was not the joyful reunion he had in mind. He hadn't expected to find his eldest in bed. He'd wanted to come down here, get some answers and then take his boy and go back to Pastor Jim's. He stood up. “I'm going to go talk to the doctors and let you eat, but I won't be far, okay?”
“Okay... dad.” Dean said, more to his mashed potatoes than to his father.
*
It was the doctor who told John the ugly, ugly truth and the reason for Dean's broken nature. Two days ago, a team of undercover cops busted the Chicago link in one of the biggest child prostitution rings in the country. They'd not found just Dean in the basement of a house in a neighborhood that John wouldn't even thinking of walking into even if he was armed with a machine gun - they'd found five other children - two boys and three girls - not one of them over the age of fifteen. It made John want to vomit just thinking about someone doing that to a child and it made his blood boil thinking of someone doing that to his child. But it explained Dean's very tentative nature. He'd taught his boy how to salt doorways, fire a gun and fight monsters people thought were fiction. Somehow, he'd forgotten about the other monsters - the monsters who prowled the world looking for something innocent to hurt and destroy.
John wanted to grab the bastard who'd done this to Dean, shoot him and then salt and burn his body while he was still alive.
As for all the others? The ones who'd paid the bastard to do who knew what to his boy? John didn't think it was possible for him to hate anything more than the demon who killed Mary... but it was starting to look as if he could.
It looked as if the Winchester family was back at square one - because John couldn't even begin to think about how to start to fix the damage that had been done to Dean.
*
Sam went with Pastor Jim to the Goodwill Store to get new clothes for Dean. He didn't understand why his brother didn't have any clothes of his own anymore - he was fairly certain that whoever took him must have given him new clothes - if he'd managed to grow into Dean's old clothes in the three years it'd been, his brother had to have grown some too. Sam was no stranger to Goodwill shopping - almost his entire wardrobe was furnished via the place. The only things that were always bought brand new in the Winchester family were socks, underwear and shoes. Everything else, from shirts to pants to coats were second-hand. He'd almost been seven when Dean was taken from that supermarket and he can remember being angry that Dad had left without Dean.
Sam knew his brother had to grow up when he turned four years old.
Sam had managed to have a childhood that lasted two years longer. With Dean gone, security and glue in the family had started to unravel and he'd learned his dad wasn't a traveling salesman. His dad hunted monsters. Monsters for Picard's sake. (Sam had become quite a fan of the new Star Trek and was convinced that Captain Picard was the best officer Starfleet ever had.) “Pastor Jim?”
“Yes, Sam?” The pastor was sorting through some flannel shirts, looking for things one size bigger than Dean needed, because John had stated that the boy needed to put on at least thirty pounds.
“Why did the people in the van take Dean in the first place?”
Pastor Jim sighed softly. John had told him what had happened to Dean - and had told him plainly that he didn't want Sam to know about it - not yet. “There are a lot of evil people in this world, Samuel.” He was the only person who ever called Sam that. “And instead of trying to make this world a better place they are determined to make it worse.”
“Like those people who drove that truck bomb under the World Trade Center?” In addition to Star Trek, Sam had also become an avid watcher of the news - and the incident in New York had been all over the place for the past two weeks.
“Yes - but not all of them think on such a... large scale.” He shook his head. “Some just want to harm things weaker than they are - it makes them feel powerful, when it truth, all it does is make them a coward.”
“Dean's not weak...”
“To the people who took him, he was.” The pastor came over to Sam who was looking through some hooded sweatshirts. “Dean was ten at the time - and according to your father, the man who grabbed him was even larger than your dad.”
Sam thought about that for a moment. Papa Winchester, in his mind - frustrating as he was - was a towering presence that could slay any monster that he came across - from an acheri to a werewolf. He thought of Dean, who'd been taller at ten then he was - no, his older brother didn't have a weak bone in his body. Whoever grabbed him had to have been huge - like Chewbacca and Worf thrown together. “Is he... is he going to be okay though?”
Jim Murphy gave the boy an encouraging smile. “He's going to be back with his family - and that is going to go a long way in helping him.”
“Okay.” Sam flipped the next hanger over and looked at a maroon hoodie with 'USMC' emblazoned on the front in tall white letters. “I think Dean might like this...” He pulled it off the rack and showed it to the pastor.
Jim's smile became more certain. “Yes, yes I think he would.”
*
Getting Dean out of the hospital was a lot easier than John had thought it would be. The doctors had given the go-ahead two days ago for the healthier children and an assistant district attorney had spoken to all the families, asking them to leave contact numbers and addresses - not one child found called the city of Chicago home - in the event that they would needed to give testimony at the trial. John had wished the bastards would have confessed their crime - they'd been caught red handed, after all - but the fuckers were invoking their rights to remain silent. John had given them Pastor Jim's address in Blue Earth - and five days after finally being reunited with Dean, the Winchesters were on their way. John didn't miss the look that passed between Dean and the girl in the elevator - if he remembered correctly, her name was Lily - and she was Sam's age.
When they came to the parking garage, the girl's family went one way and the Winchesters another. Once they came within sight of the Impala, for the first time since they'd been reunited, John saw a genuine smile on Dean's face. The boy seemed almost happy as they got into the car - perhaps this was what the boy had been waiting for... to be back someplace where he'd felt safe. The Impala was the Winchester Family constant - they'd all sat on the hood the night of the fire - and it was the closest thing to a home they had. The Impala equaled safety and sanctuary. “Ready to go?” He asked once the two of them were settled in the front seat.
“Uh huh.” He buckles himself in and shifts slightly in his seat.
“Okay kiddo...” John pushes the shoe-box full of cassette tapes across the seat at him. “Why don't you pick out something for us to listen to on the drive?”
Dean merely blinks and pulls the box closer to him, looking down at the contents, flipping the containers over slowly before opening one and handing the cassette to his father. “This one.”
John glances at the label and manages another smile. “Kansas it is, then.” He pushes the cassette into the player and a moment later, the opening bars of 'Dust in the Wind' start up. The monotone speaking is starting to creep him out a little, but like the doctors told him - Dean had been through Hell and patience was needed along with lots of TLC. They didn't speak again until they were out of the city and heading north. “That girl in the elevator... what's her name again?”
“That was Lily.” Dean was leaning against the door, watching the ground fly past them. “She's ten... she was new.”
“New?” John remarked. “What do you mean, new?”
“She'd only been there for a few months...” He shuddered. “I... I was in the green van when they snatched her.” He shivered and hunched his shoulders. “That was in California.”
“If you don't want to talk about this yet Dean, we don't have to.”
“No...” The boy sat up straighter. “I... I was being transferred to Chicago when they stole Lily.” He rubbed his nose. “She was just... she was just riding her bike back from the library and they grabbed her.” He hunched over and turned green. “They... they... right there in the van... I was... I had to watch...”
John swallowed hard and put the missing verb into that sentence. “Shit...” He flipped off the music.
“I... I wanted to help her but... they had me tied up...” Dean hugged himself. “When the guy in the back was finished... the driver pulled off and they switched places...” He started to cry, feeling ashamed. “I wanted to help her... I tried to get free.. but...”
“Dean...” He reached a hand over and the boy shied away from his hand like it was on fire.
“No one helped me either.” His voice was barely audible. “They did the same thing to me that they did to Lily when they grabbed me. But that was two different guys. I... those guys sold me to the guys in the green van...”
“Sold you?” John was aware that his hands were shaking and he had to grip the steering wheel harder to keep himself steady.
“Yeah.” Dean slowly uncurled himself. “I'm sorry.”
“Sorry? What in hell do you have to be sorry for?”
“Cause I'm no good anymore.” He sniffled. “So if you don't want me, it's okay...”
“The hell with this...” He threw on the hazard lights and pulled off on the side of the road. He was going to stop this downward spiral before it got any worse. He leaned over and took his son by the shoulders. “Now you listen to me, Dean Joseph Winchester - you are not worthless. You will never be worthless in my eyes. I don't want you to even think that. Understand?”
Dean swallowed hard and slowly nodded. “I...but...”
“There's no buts, here Dean.” John kept his locked on his son's. “What happened to you was not your fault, it was never your fault and never it will be. What is important is the fact that you're back with your brother and me and that you're safe. Furthermore, if I so much as catch anyone looking at you funny - I've got a sawed off and a shovel in the trunk.”
Dean gave him a curious look. “When did you start carrying a sawed off, dad?”
“When I found out how good they were against ghouls.” John relaxed and slid back into the driver's seat. “Give it a few months... I'll let you make one of your own.”
“So you... you've not found the thing that killed mom yet?”
“No...” He started the car back up and pulled back onto the road. “Finding more information though...”
Dean nodded as they started off down the highway. “I still get to be a hunter then?”
“Of course, Deano - I could use your help... Sam's good... but he seems to like books more than guns.” Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Dean start to smile. “I looked for you, you know that don't you?”
“Yes, dad... but they... the people liked to move us around a lot. I told the cops that....”
“We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, son.”
“I want to... the doctors said it would help.” He sat back, his shoulders slumping. “I remember something else... something Lily told me.”
“What's that?”
“Her dad died in a house fire when she was a baby. The guy with her mom was her stepdad.”
John let out a low whistle. “So it might not just be the mothers...” He shook his head. “It's just going to take time, son.”
“I know.”
*
Sam woke up when he heard the familiar rumble of the Impala in the Pastor's driveway. He sat up in bed, debating on getting up or not when he heard the car doors whine when they opened and then shut. The clock on the stand said it was eleven at night and while he was tired, Sam figured he didn't want to wait. Throwing back the covers he set his feet on the floor and slowly made his way towards the rectory's kitchen where he could hear his dad and Pastor Jim talking. Wait.. that wasn't his dad's voice, not entirely... it wasn't gruff enough. He peered around the door-frame and saw a very lanky boy sitting at the table, talking in monotone. That's not Dean.. Dean's bigger than that...
“I see someone else is still awake.” Jim looked up from his seat at the table. “Either that, or the smell of hot chocolate woke you up.”
Dean slowly turned in his chair and blinked in surprise. In three years Sam hadn't changed all that much it seemed - other than getting a little taller. He smirked. “I see you finally grew into those ears of yours.... or are they hidden under all that hair?”
John snorted into his mug. That was the Dean he remembered.
Sam slid into the fourth chair as the pastor got another mug and set it in front of him. “Wanna borrow some?”
“Thanks for reminding me Dean, Sam does need a haircut...” John said more to his mug than to anyone else.
Sam glowered at his older brother as he took a sip of hot chocolate but just over the rim of his cup he was able to see Dean's face - and in his eyes he could still see a hint of that spark of mischief that he'd always associated with his big brother. Things would never been completely okay in the Winchester family - but they were on the road to recovery. It would just take time.
Prompt: rent boys/girls
Medium: fic
Rating: Hard R
Warnings: mentions of child abuse, child rape, disturbing images
Summary: One afternoon - John sent Dean to the store to get dinner - he wouldn't come back to his family for three years.
John kept thinking it was a dream - the same dream he'd been having for the past three years. The dream of Dean being found - now the dream was real and he was driving as fast he could for a hospital in Chicago. He'd left Sammy with Pastor Jim in Blue Earth. He'd go get Dean, come back to the Pastor's house and they'd all figure out how to be a family again. There'd been something in the way the doctor on the phone had spoken to him that told John that something was very wrong with his little boy - so bad that he was told that it would be better to hear it in person. As the Impala ate up the highway, the motor rumbling like thunder, John relived that terrible day that things fell apart.
He'd come back from a hunt far to exhausted to pack his boys into the car and head for the next town - even though it was one in the afternoon. He'd taken a nap, woken up around four to find his boys watching cartoons. A quick perusal of the supplies he left them showed nothing but peanut butter and tuna. So John had given his eldest five dollars and told him to go the supermarket on the next block and pick up a package of hot dogs and some buns. Ten years old at the time, John knew the boy could make it to the store and back in thirty minutes - forty five at the most if he managed to get into the line where some old lady with fifty coupons and bad eyesight wanted to fight with the clerk. While he was gone, John would take a shower and when Dean got back, they'd have some dinner and get mostly packed. He'd take another quick nap - telling his eldest to wake him up at ten, and then they'd leave town.
No dilly, no dally - no problem.
With the five dollars in the pocket of his jeans, Dean had left and John, checking on Sammy one more time - though all his youngest wanted was to be left alone while the Ninja Turtles foiled the Shredder's latest evil plan. John fully expected to come out of the bathroom and find his eldest already busy cooking the family's dinner and listening to Sammy whine about the ever-present Spegettios. John had read somewhere that there was a serving of vegetables in a serving of the pasta, and growing boys needed to get their vegetables somehow. What he expected and what he got were two very, very different things. At first, it seemed as if his assumption of the long line was right when the half hour clicked past - but when Jeopardy gave way to the six o'clock news and the news gave way to Wheel of Fortune, John started to worry. When the evening sit-coms started, fear started to kick in. Dean was not the type of kid to wander off or run away. He cooked a can of pasta for Sam, who was starting to look pensive as well. The rest of the night was a blur in his memory.
Two days later and ready to tear his hair out, John finally had gotten his answer via the corner market security cameras and the local police. Some sick fuck in a red conversion van had snatched his eldest from the store's parking lot and, as the van had no plates - left very little for the police to go on. The place was close enough to the highway that it was a fair bet that Dean was miles away by now. Utterly heartbroken, John had packed their things up in the Impala and he and Sam had left. John now had two bastards to hunt. The demon who killed Mary and the monster that took his boy.
The second alarm bell rang in John's mind when he saw the cops standing outside several rooms in the pediatric ward. It was his experience that this was not normal. The one stationed outside Dean's room asked for John's ID before he would even let him look into the room. Patience was his friend right now, even though what he wanted to do was shove the cop across the hallway so he could see his son.
The officer whose name plate read 'Reynolds' leaned into the room. “Dean, your father is here.”
John stepped into the room and instantly thought there had to be some kind of mistake. The boy in the bed was thin - to thin - even from across the room he could see that the kid was practically swimming in the Johnny shirt was wearing. The kid was also taller than Dean - but he's not ten years old anymore - a garish bruise marred one side of the kid's face and his hair, while fair, was bluntly cut as if he did it himself with a steak knife. He was at the foot of the bed when the boy finally looked up at him and John's stomach fell to his feet. The bruise hid the dusting of freckles on one side but it was in the boy's brilliantly colored green eyes - eyes that had haunted his dreams for he didn't know how many nights - the eyes told him the truth. “Dean?”
Dean blinked blankly at his father, feeling his cheeks slowly turn pink in shame. A lot had happened in the three years since he'd been grabbed in that parking lot. He wasn't worth much anymore. “Yes?”
John sat down in the chair next to the bed, not certain of what other injuries his boy had. “They tell you I was coming?”
“Yes, sir.” Dean curled up, resting his chin on his knees.
“I don't know how long they want to keep you here. But we'll go as soon as we can, okay?”
Dean turned his head to the side, looking at his father. The sheer misery he felt was reflected in his eyes “Where's Sammy?”
“He's at Pastor Jim's. I didn't want to bring him down here with me... I figured you needed some time.” John let a long breath. “I wish I could tell you that everything is going to be fine... but...” He shook his head. “Just going to have to take it one day at a time.”
Dean nodded in reply and straighted up slightly when a nurse came in carrying a tray.
“Lunch time!” She said in a cheery voice and busied herself setting things up on the table that swung over the bed. “You just take your time with that, there's no rush.”
“Thank you.” Dean replied quietly as the woman left the room. He stared down at the plate for a moment, almost in prayer, before reaching for his fork.
John felt the most unsettling thing was the fact that Dean wouldn't look him in the eye. This was not the joyful reunion he had in mind. He hadn't expected to find his eldest in bed. He'd wanted to come down here, get some answers and then take his boy and go back to Pastor Jim's. He stood up. “I'm going to go talk to the doctors and let you eat, but I won't be far, okay?”
“Okay... dad.” Dean said, more to his mashed potatoes than to his father.
*
It was the doctor who told John the ugly, ugly truth and the reason for Dean's broken nature. Two days ago, a team of undercover cops busted the Chicago link in one of the biggest child prostitution rings in the country. They'd not found just Dean in the basement of a house in a neighborhood that John wouldn't even thinking of walking into even if he was armed with a machine gun - they'd found five other children - two boys and three girls - not one of them over the age of fifteen. It made John want to vomit just thinking about someone doing that to a child and it made his blood boil thinking of someone doing that to his child. But it explained Dean's very tentative nature. He'd taught his boy how to salt doorways, fire a gun and fight monsters people thought were fiction. Somehow, he'd forgotten about the other monsters - the monsters who prowled the world looking for something innocent to hurt and destroy.
John wanted to grab the bastard who'd done this to Dean, shoot him and then salt and burn his body while he was still alive.
As for all the others? The ones who'd paid the bastard to do who knew what to his boy? John didn't think it was possible for him to hate anything more than the demon who killed Mary... but it was starting to look as if he could.
It looked as if the Winchester family was back at square one - because John couldn't even begin to think about how to start to fix the damage that had been done to Dean.
*
Sam went with Pastor Jim to the Goodwill Store to get new clothes for Dean. He didn't understand why his brother didn't have any clothes of his own anymore - he was fairly certain that whoever took him must have given him new clothes - if he'd managed to grow into Dean's old clothes in the three years it'd been, his brother had to have grown some too. Sam was no stranger to Goodwill shopping - almost his entire wardrobe was furnished via the place. The only things that were always bought brand new in the Winchester family were socks, underwear and shoes. Everything else, from shirts to pants to coats were second-hand. He'd almost been seven when Dean was taken from that supermarket and he can remember being angry that Dad had left without Dean.
Sam knew his brother had to grow up when he turned four years old.
Sam had managed to have a childhood that lasted two years longer. With Dean gone, security and glue in the family had started to unravel and he'd learned his dad wasn't a traveling salesman. His dad hunted monsters. Monsters for Picard's sake. (Sam had become quite a fan of the new Star Trek and was convinced that Captain Picard was the best officer Starfleet ever had.) “Pastor Jim?”
“Yes, Sam?” The pastor was sorting through some flannel shirts, looking for things one size bigger than Dean needed, because John had stated that the boy needed to put on at least thirty pounds.
“Why did the people in the van take Dean in the first place?”
Pastor Jim sighed softly. John had told him what had happened to Dean - and had told him plainly that he didn't want Sam to know about it - not yet. “There are a lot of evil people in this world, Samuel.” He was the only person who ever called Sam that. “And instead of trying to make this world a better place they are determined to make it worse.”
“Like those people who drove that truck bomb under the World Trade Center?” In addition to Star Trek, Sam had also become an avid watcher of the news - and the incident in New York had been all over the place for the past two weeks.
“Yes - but not all of them think on such a... large scale.” He shook his head. “Some just want to harm things weaker than they are - it makes them feel powerful, when it truth, all it does is make them a coward.”
“Dean's not weak...”
“To the people who took him, he was.” The pastor came over to Sam who was looking through some hooded sweatshirts. “Dean was ten at the time - and according to your father, the man who grabbed him was even larger than your dad.”
Sam thought about that for a moment. Papa Winchester, in his mind - frustrating as he was - was a towering presence that could slay any monster that he came across - from an acheri to a werewolf. He thought of Dean, who'd been taller at ten then he was - no, his older brother didn't have a weak bone in his body. Whoever grabbed him had to have been huge - like Chewbacca and Worf thrown together. “Is he... is he going to be okay though?”
Jim Murphy gave the boy an encouraging smile. “He's going to be back with his family - and that is going to go a long way in helping him.”
“Okay.” Sam flipped the next hanger over and looked at a maroon hoodie with 'USMC' emblazoned on the front in tall white letters. “I think Dean might like this...” He pulled it off the rack and showed it to the pastor.
Jim's smile became more certain. “Yes, yes I think he would.”
*
Getting Dean out of the hospital was a lot easier than John had thought it would be. The doctors had given the go-ahead two days ago for the healthier children and an assistant district attorney had spoken to all the families, asking them to leave contact numbers and addresses - not one child found called the city of Chicago home - in the event that they would needed to give testimony at the trial. John had wished the bastards would have confessed their crime - they'd been caught red handed, after all - but the fuckers were invoking their rights to remain silent. John had given them Pastor Jim's address in Blue Earth - and five days after finally being reunited with Dean, the Winchesters were on their way. John didn't miss the look that passed between Dean and the girl in the elevator - if he remembered correctly, her name was Lily - and she was Sam's age.
When they came to the parking garage, the girl's family went one way and the Winchesters another. Once they came within sight of the Impala, for the first time since they'd been reunited, John saw a genuine smile on Dean's face. The boy seemed almost happy as they got into the car - perhaps this was what the boy had been waiting for... to be back someplace where he'd felt safe. The Impala was the Winchester Family constant - they'd all sat on the hood the night of the fire - and it was the closest thing to a home they had. The Impala equaled safety and sanctuary. “Ready to go?” He asked once the two of them were settled in the front seat.
“Uh huh.” He buckles himself in and shifts slightly in his seat.
“Okay kiddo...” John pushes the shoe-box full of cassette tapes across the seat at him. “Why don't you pick out something for us to listen to on the drive?”
Dean merely blinks and pulls the box closer to him, looking down at the contents, flipping the containers over slowly before opening one and handing the cassette to his father. “This one.”
John glances at the label and manages another smile. “Kansas it is, then.” He pushes the cassette into the player and a moment later, the opening bars of 'Dust in the Wind' start up. The monotone speaking is starting to creep him out a little, but like the doctors told him - Dean had been through Hell and patience was needed along with lots of TLC. They didn't speak again until they were out of the city and heading north. “That girl in the elevator... what's her name again?”
“That was Lily.” Dean was leaning against the door, watching the ground fly past them. “She's ten... she was new.”
“New?” John remarked. “What do you mean, new?”
“She'd only been there for a few months...” He shuddered. “I... I was in the green van when they snatched her.” He shivered and hunched his shoulders. “That was in California.”
“If you don't want to talk about this yet Dean, we don't have to.”
“No...” The boy sat up straighter. “I... I was being transferred to Chicago when they stole Lily.” He rubbed his nose. “She was just... she was just riding her bike back from the library and they grabbed her.” He hunched over and turned green. “They... they... right there in the van... I was... I had to watch...”
John swallowed hard and put the missing verb into that sentence. “Shit...” He flipped off the music.
“I... I wanted to help her but... they had me tied up...” Dean hugged himself. “When the guy in the back was finished... the driver pulled off and they switched places...” He started to cry, feeling ashamed. “I wanted to help her... I tried to get free.. but...”
“Dean...” He reached a hand over and the boy shied away from his hand like it was on fire.
“No one helped me either.” His voice was barely audible. “They did the same thing to me that they did to Lily when they grabbed me. But that was two different guys. I... those guys sold me to the guys in the green van...”
“Sold you?” John was aware that his hands were shaking and he had to grip the steering wheel harder to keep himself steady.
“Yeah.” Dean slowly uncurled himself. “I'm sorry.”
“Sorry? What in hell do you have to be sorry for?”
“Cause I'm no good anymore.” He sniffled. “So if you don't want me, it's okay...”
“The hell with this...” He threw on the hazard lights and pulled off on the side of the road. He was going to stop this downward spiral before it got any worse. He leaned over and took his son by the shoulders. “Now you listen to me, Dean Joseph Winchester - you are not worthless. You will never be worthless in my eyes. I don't want you to even think that. Understand?”
Dean swallowed hard and slowly nodded. “I...but...”
“There's no buts, here Dean.” John kept his locked on his son's. “What happened to you was not your fault, it was never your fault and never it will be. What is important is the fact that you're back with your brother and me and that you're safe. Furthermore, if I so much as catch anyone looking at you funny - I've got a sawed off and a shovel in the trunk.”
Dean gave him a curious look. “When did you start carrying a sawed off, dad?”
“When I found out how good they were against ghouls.” John relaxed and slid back into the driver's seat. “Give it a few months... I'll let you make one of your own.”
“So you... you've not found the thing that killed mom yet?”
“No...” He started the car back up and pulled back onto the road. “Finding more information though...”
Dean nodded as they started off down the highway. “I still get to be a hunter then?”
“Of course, Deano - I could use your help... Sam's good... but he seems to like books more than guns.” Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Dean start to smile. “I looked for you, you know that don't you?”
“Yes, dad... but they... the people liked to move us around a lot. I told the cops that....”
“We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, son.”
“I want to... the doctors said it would help.” He sat back, his shoulders slumping. “I remember something else... something Lily told me.”
“What's that?”
“Her dad died in a house fire when she was a baby. The guy with her mom was her stepdad.”
John let out a low whistle. “So it might not just be the mothers...” He shook his head. “It's just going to take time, son.”
“I know.”
*
Sam woke up when he heard the familiar rumble of the Impala in the Pastor's driveway. He sat up in bed, debating on getting up or not when he heard the car doors whine when they opened and then shut. The clock on the stand said it was eleven at night and while he was tired, Sam figured he didn't want to wait. Throwing back the covers he set his feet on the floor and slowly made his way towards the rectory's kitchen where he could hear his dad and Pastor Jim talking. Wait.. that wasn't his dad's voice, not entirely... it wasn't gruff enough. He peered around the door-frame and saw a very lanky boy sitting at the table, talking in monotone. That's not Dean.. Dean's bigger than that...
“I see someone else is still awake.” Jim looked up from his seat at the table. “Either that, or the smell of hot chocolate woke you up.”
Dean slowly turned in his chair and blinked in surprise. In three years Sam hadn't changed all that much it seemed - other than getting a little taller. He smirked. “I see you finally grew into those ears of yours.... or are they hidden under all that hair?”
John snorted into his mug. That was the Dean he remembered.
Sam slid into the fourth chair as the pastor got another mug and set it in front of him. “Wanna borrow some?”
“Thanks for reminding me Dean, Sam does need a haircut...” John said more to his mug than to anyone else.
Sam glowered at his older brother as he took a sip of hot chocolate but just over the rim of his cup he was able to see Dean's face - and in his eyes he could still see a hint of that spark of mischief that he'd always associated with his big brother. Things would never been completely okay in the Winchester family - but they were on the road to recovery. It would just take time.