Beatty, 1988 (part 1 of 9)
Title: Beatty, 1988
Writer: kalliel
Artist: starry_ice
Genre: gen/Wee!chesters
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~42k
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 + a/n | Full Story (.PDF) | Artwork by starry_ice
Summary: Kid's got a .45 trained on him, too. Pops it out of his old man's jacket and flips the safety, smooth as smiling. It's not the motions of a kid who grew up wishing for a Red Ryder, or a kid who shot rats from the loft in the barn--way he holds it, this gun's shot things that knew they were being aimed at.
Kid can't be more than nine.
august lasts.
Pastor Jim calls her a Beech Duchess 76. He calls her a beautiful aircraft, and asks Sam if he agrees. Sam doesn't, really, because Pastor Jim also tells him that Dad and Dean are taking her to California. They'll be back soon; don't worry. Pastor Jim holds Sam's hand as they watch from the second-story window, and the plane gets smaller and smaller until Sam can't hardly see it in the sky. That's how small it is by the time Sam realizes that it's not going to turn around.
That it's not coming back.
Eventually Pastor Jim goes downstairs. Sam stays at the window by himself, staring at the place where Beech Duchess--and Dad, and Dean--disappeared. "Why did I get left?" he asks in a small voice (he is already five; he's outgrown small voices, he knows it). But no one is around to answer, and that makes him feel smaller still.
And because counting makes him feel big, Sam counts the minutes they've been gone.
He's good at counting. He could probably count forever. Even so, Dad and Dean are gone for a big number of minutes--one that's beyond even his abilities.
Sam doesn't like the thought. He switches to counting cracks in the ceiling instead.
Not that he's counting toward anything in particular, because sometimes "three days" is three days, and sometimes it's seven. He's five years old and he can count to thirty-one, knows all twelve months (in order), and can tell time so long as it's on the half hour and before noon. He's not quite sure where Dad gets 16:00, because he's never seen a clock that went up that high.
He's good at counting, but even better at dates, because Dad is made up of a handful of numbers and months, and not much else. But Dean stands by "January 24th," "four days," and "no later than midnight" like they're more than they seem, and for now that's good enough for Sam. (He'd been asked once what his Daddy was like, by a lady who'd served him a tall glass of shirley temple, with the cherry in it and everything. He told her, "My dad is April 7th. He promised." She laughed. Maybe she'd known Dad was actually April 13th. Maybe 16:00 is Dad's code for "not today.")
Finally, Pastor Jim comes back. He asks Sam if his ceiling's as nice as the Sistine Chapel and Sam says yes, because Sam figures Pastor Jim wants to hear that this stupid white ceiling is as nice as his sister's, but Pastor Jim laughs like the shirley temple lady did and pulls something special from his pocket.
"Might I suggest you count these instead? It might help."
Beads. Beads like the ocean, all blue streaked with white veins, and beads like the sky, clouded white but otherwise clear. A dangling cross.
Pastor Jim places them in Sam's hands. These are Hail Marys; there are ten of them. This is Our Father. You say their names and move your fingers down the lines, like so.
It's a little strange. Sam's pretty sure Dad approves of the Cross (well, he threw it into a fully-drawn tub, once), but he's never spoken to it. So there's Our Father; his and Dean's. Hail Mary, Mom.
And well, Dean is turning ten soon, so that all works out well enough for Sam. Dean is the blue beads.
Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Our Father.
Pastor Jim chuckles and turns to leave. "May God be with you," he says.
Sam doesn't know what that means.
call waiting (i).
Pastor Jim's telephone is silent and his clock is not.
A call would've been nice. Sam doesn't know why he's expecting one, because when Dad is on business, he tends to stay that way until he walks in the front door. He doesn't call, just disappears. But Dean, he thought, maybe--
--Or maybe not.
Phone calls are like everything else Sam wants and will not get. To be in the habit of making and receiving phone calls, you have to have a phone, for one. And a consistent phone number. And a house. A house with working electricity and that the phone company knows is yours. They don't have that. Instead, they have a flurry of bad motels, some apartments if they're lucky. Life is hoarding the complimentary muffins from the good motels, living off your fat at the bad ones. Life is sitting in a car with Dean for fourteen hours, then stopping, and sitting in a motel room for fourteen more.
Sam's first best memory is waking up in the same bed for four months straight. He remembers pawing at the threadbare swatch on his bedsheets and delighting in the fact that it was there and he knew it would be. He remembers looking out the window (careful not to disturb the snowy layer of salt on the sill) and knowing he'd see the lady next door, parading around her flat in tap shoes and wearing what looked like a robe made out of crocodile garden hose.
Sam's first worst memory is watching Dean walk out the front door with Dad for four months straight, watching him walk out and leave him alone, at the mercy of Ms. Aliza Gallagher.
She is Dean's tap-dancing crocodile-wearing God-fearing substitute, and she is not a good one.
Four months pass and they hit the road again, and again it's fourteen hours of driving with Dean, and fourteen hours of waiting. But something's different.
It's different and it doesn't ever turn back.
School, genius, says Dean. It's right next to Hell; look it up. Sam loves school. (Sam loves school because he hates his brother, because how's he supposed to look it up if he can't read? And if Dean hates it, then it's Sam's duty to supply due affection to the offending item.
Dean hates salad-especially the red cabbage restaurants put in it, no matter what state you’re in or what kind of salad you order. Sam’s favorite. Dean likes Ohio license plates (at least, when they're in Ohio he does). Sam likes Alaska, because he's pretty sure he's never seen one. And he wouldn't know it if he did.)
But mostly, Dean likes going out with Dad; and Sam hates it when Dean goes.
"Just eat your salad." And Dean scowls, and Dad sighs, and it's really neither of them doing neither of those things, because it's Pastor Jim sitting across the table from him, and he's asking if he'd pass the dressing, please.
Because Dad and Dean are off having a grand adventure together, forgetting about him with an ease Sam can only hope to master as time drags on.
When he grows up and has adventures of his own, he will remember not to call.
After dinner, Sam lies under the covers and listens to Pastor Jim's snores. He excavates Pastor Jim's beads from his shirt pocket and twists one of the beads experimentally. He whispers, Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Our Father.
Pastor Jim made good on his promise.
He doesn't feel quite so alone. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Our Father. Until he goes drifts into sleep, Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Our Father.
fear (i).
The job is easy.
It can't go wrong.
The job is a perfect training ground for you, John tells Dean, and he's pretty sure he means it. Because Dean is nearly ten, and he's got to learn somewhere, right? It's just a nest of kelpies in Oakland Bay.
It's easy.
Of course, they are only seven hours out from a refueling in South Dakota, and Dean's making it full-obvious that the flight there is not so easy.
Dean's kept his eyes and his mouth clamped shut since take-off, but his body language is roaring bloody murder. His hands, white-knuckled, are vises on the seat cushion. His left foot taps out a jittery rhythm that is accompanied by the wet sound of his tongue sliding back and forth along his teeth. His breaths complete the little one man ensemble he has going in the back seat of the aircraft, staccato and syncopated.
"Don't waste your fear on something that's not gonna hurt you, kid." You know what's out there.
(Four months later Pan Am Flight 103 goes down. Dean tapes the clipping to the Impala's dashboard but says nothing. It's the tail end of the passive-aggression that he grows out of around the same time he starts sleeping with his knife. Sam inherits the attitude and as far as John knows, is going to keep it 'til the end of days. Nevertheless, John amends his statement. Don't scare from things you can't fix.)
Dean nods, Yessir, but the plane dips in the air and Dean's wordless, white-faced fearsong persists.
John redirects his attentions, full concentration on the controls in front of him.
It's nothing to worry about. Just turbulence.
Turbulence. John hasn't flown in a long time. In fact, he's pretty sure the last time he went up, it was with Joe Shilling, Air Force vet, and he himself had done very little of the actual flying. But John knew aircraft theory to the letter, and that just had to be enough.
It was going to be enough.
Sometime between John's keeping tabs on Dean and keeping tabs on the sky, the world dons its evening blues. Above the cloud cover, everything is listless, matte. The plane's lights send a scattershot of red-yellow-white across the landscape directly ahead, but even these stop short, brilliance cleaved in two by lack of contrast. John imagines this is what Hell looks like. Nothing moves, and there is nothing you can do to change it.
It should be Heaven, judging from the location. But at this point John is so turned around he's not sure where they are. The dials and gauges are not beneficial. It is midnight, it has been ten hours, and they have flown consistently southwest. By John's estimations, this means two things: They need to land and refuel, and that landing probably won't be disastrous, because they won't have hit the Pacific quite yet.
"Beech Duchess 76. Beech Duchess 76, come in. You are flying in restricted airspace. Supply identifying information immediately."
Of course.
His name is Joe Shilling, he says; he's from Lawrence, Kansas; and no, he did not die in 1974. John has a funny way of memorializing his friends, but he hopes they understand that he is grateful.
--
Dad knows what he's doing. And that almost makes it worse, because Dad knows what he's doing, and Dad knows what it's doing to him. Dean's probably going to drown in his own spit, because swallowing draws too much of his attention away from Not Dying to be truly appropriate at the moment. It doesn't help that his stomach is already turned to kelpie or whatever the hell is waiting for them in California. (Why couldn't they have driven? Why couldn't they have borrowed some money, got the car back? Why did it even land in the impound lot in the first place? Why did Pastor Jim even have a plane? Why were they flying in it? Why was California so far away? Why why why--?)
On second thought.
If he's busy swallowing he'll be too busy to cry, which is where he's pretty sure his tight breaths, hitching up further and further in his throat, are headed. And Dean Winchester is nine years old. He's not gonna cry.
Shoulders, relax. Throat, deconstrict. Kelpie-fied stomach?--quit the panicked flip flops. Dean takes a deep breath and the airplane nosedives sharply, overtaken by a stray crosswind. Dean gasps, chokes, and doesn't stop coughing until Dad sorts the plane out and they're flying as smoothly as is possible in a little tin death trap. Dad knows what he's doing. As he coughs he draws in deep gulps of air--the calming breaths he doesn't want Dad to hear, though he's not quite sure why.
Dad's not blind, after all.
The airplane takes a swandive and leaves Dean's stomach somewhere up above the clouds.
"Beech Duchess 76. Beech Duchess 76, come in. You are flying in restricted airspace. Supply identifying information immediately."
Dad grunts something, which is lost in the shuddering racket the plane is making. Pastor Jim will not be pleased if this thing doesn't make it to California. Dean will not be pleased if they do not make it back to grab Sammy, and never do this again.
They spiral lower, lower, lower, finally breaking the cloud barrier. There's nothing below them, and nothing above. They are nowhere.
"Beech Duchess 76. Beech Duchess 76, come in. You are flying in restricted airspace. Supply identifying information immediately."
Plane swerves again. The anxiety has moved past Dean's stomach and bled into everything else, jellied and kelpied and it's like there isn't anything else left. His grip is fear and his scowl is fear and the stars dancing in front of his screwed-shut eyes, that's fear, too. Imagination.
"--restricted airspace. Supply identifying information--"
Dad shuts the radio down. Shuts everything down but the lights and the engine. And Dean shuts down because if he's gonna die, he doesn't want the last thing he sees to be the back of his dad's head as it flies through the windshield of a crashing plane.
Nevertheless, he's pretty sure it's the last thing he's going to feel.
--
Something is wrong.
"Beech Duchess 76. Beech Duchess 76, come in. You are flying in restricted airspace. Supply identifying information immediately."
John's eyes snap to the radio. Everything is dark. Insistently, the message repeats. Again.
Again.
And John is in his element. This is not about static interference. This is not about flying a personal aircraft. This is about skirting evil, and for the last four years, there isn't anything John's been better at.
The message itself isn't immediately helpful. There is nothing suspicious about a tower flag. Maybe it came from a military base, the local airport. The former is more likely, given that apparently they're flying in a restricted zone--
--The plane groans like a woman scorned, but John pays her little mind. The cogs in his brain are turning, already mapping the case he's not even going to properly have 'til tomorrow. But the familiarity of process, the known unknown, is a conduit for conviction, and it's all muscle memory from here. It's as much a homecoming as any.
John pulls up slightly as the ground swims into view just below. 'S gonna be okay, kid, he wants to say. But during his lifetime, John has said that to so many poor dying bastards, the words don't mean what they used to. He can't say that now. Not here. Not to Dean.
The plane makes ground contact with a jolt, metal screeches like it probably shouldn't, but for a fugitive plane on a stretch of dirt, it's not bad. Dean makes a sound like pain, but John doesn't look back. Road's been clean and smooth as dirt gets, but that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way.
They barrel down the highway, far as their momentum takes them, a comet slicing through dark. They encounter nothing but brush and dirt and shards of brightness that are either broken glass or spots of rain wet.
Finally, they are still. John shuts everything down, 'til there's nothing to see but black and gray, and nothing to hear but Dean's choppy breaths, already fogging the windows (how cold can it be, in August? wherever they've landed) and the eternal drone from the phantom radio. Something's calling Beech Duchess. And however Jim worked this plane over, John's pretty sure it wasn't nearly enough.
ricochet.
Being sick just takes too much effort. Dean lies boneless in his seat and he's never going to move again. Nine hours of pure torture and suddenly the pall is lifted and life doesn't even have the decency to send relief his way. Just a jagged sense of loss and a desperate apprehension that doesn't even have a source anymore. He's still all wires; his muscles scream push but there's no pull, no tension. Like a broken Slinky. Once stretched, irreparable--it's right there on the warning label. Dean resolves to die on the spot.
But then, plane's already haunted. It'd be redundant.
Either way, Dean is not in a forgiving mood. Da--John Winchester forges onward as though Dean's forgiveness or lack thereof doesn't really register. The plane door creaks open, and John slides out. "Snap to, kiddo."
Dean's heart and stomach and lungs are an oily soup in his chest cavity, and he can't throw it up because he's misplaced his throat, too; and Da--John Winchester doesn't even care.
Typical.
But Dean snaps to, and makes his dazed way to John's side.
"Good thing there was an air strip here."
There's a glow off in the distance, faint but yellow with the tinge of artificial light. Airstrips have airports. Towers that don't like it when you land on their runway uninvited. Dean glances back at the flying deathtrap as they walk out toward the light. It's bent weirdly in some places, but it looks as smug as ever. He can just make out the droning radio, but he knows as well as John that whatever's sending the message, it's not a transponder, and there aren't people on the other end.
Ghosts and curses. Of course. Sometimes Dean thinks hunters are the reason all these things exist, not the other way around--what with the way evil finds them. They aren't even looking.
Evil is kelpies in California and that's it. End of story.
California's not all it's cracked up to be, if this is it. Bare land mostly. Evil is having nothing to look at but fuzzy yellow light in the distance.
Cold, still air that jackets can't keep out. Evil is wastelands not having thermostats.
Bits and pieces of things underfoot go crunch. Fine dust garnished with splintered wood and glass shards, like the aftermath of mass destruction. Evil is not having thick-soled shoes.
--
Dean appears to be blaming Russia and nuclear holocaust for everything. Evil is whatever guy said evil was ignorance, because that's stupid because you know what's out there, and--
John wonders what television and the tabloids are saying, because it's 1988, not the Cuban Missile Crisis. John's just going to ride this one out, because he doesn't want to risk prodding where Dean doesn't want to be poked. They can save the falling out for tomorrow morning, when they're rested and not wandering lost.
Same goes for Beech Duchess. Something's up, that's for sure, but they need information first. (And probably salt.) John has a silver throwing knife and a .45 on his person and an arsenal in his pack, but what he really needs is a history.
And a damn apology. If you're going to dole out information on a need-to-know basis, you better be damned sure people have it when they do need it. He and Jim are gonna have some words.
John scowls at Beech Duchess. Plane's not going anywhere, and judging from the landscape, it's not gonna hurt anyone. Silver lining.
In the background of John's thoughts, Dean continues his tirade breathlessly.
John is certain no one else finds The Day After as comforting a self-defense mechanism as his son does.
Dean is pale in the moonlight, sweaty from their flight (which did not bring them nearly as close to death as he seems to think) and shivering from their present desert trek.
John shrugs his jacket from his shoulders, disentangles it from the pack's straps, and drops it onto Dean's head.
Dean looks up, and wears it like a victory cape.
--
It doesn't mean anything close to I'm sorry and never will. But it means I know and that is good enough. Maybe better.
John Winchester is Dad again.
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 + a/n | Full Story (.PDF) | Artwork by starry_ice
Writer: kalliel
Artist: starry_ice
Genre: gen/Wee!chesters
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~42k
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 + a/n | Full Story (.PDF) | Artwork by starry_ice
Summary: Kid's got a .45 trained on him, too. Pops it out of his old man's jacket and flips the safety, smooth as smiling. It's not the motions of a kid who grew up wishing for a Red Ryder, or a kid who shot rats from the loft in the barn--way he holds it, this gun's shot things that knew they were being aimed at.
Kid can't be more than nine.
august lasts.
Pastor Jim calls her a Beech Duchess 76. He calls her a beautiful aircraft, and asks Sam if he agrees. Sam doesn't, really, because Pastor Jim also tells him that Dad and Dean are taking her to California. They'll be back soon; don't worry. Pastor Jim holds Sam's hand as they watch from the second-story window, and the plane gets smaller and smaller until Sam can't hardly see it in the sky. That's how small it is by the time Sam realizes that it's not going to turn around.
That it's not coming back.
Eventually Pastor Jim goes downstairs. Sam stays at the window by himself, staring at the place where Beech Duchess--and Dad, and Dean--disappeared. "Why did I get left?" he asks in a small voice (he is already five; he's outgrown small voices, he knows it). But no one is around to answer, and that makes him feel smaller still.
And because counting makes him feel big, Sam counts the minutes they've been gone.
He's good at counting. He could probably count forever. Even so, Dad and Dean are gone for a big number of minutes--one that's beyond even his abilities.
Sam doesn't like the thought. He switches to counting cracks in the ceiling instead.
Not that he's counting toward anything in particular, because sometimes "three days" is three days, and sometimes it's seven. He's five years old and he can count to thirty-one, knows all twelve months (in order), and can tell time so long as it's on the half hour and before noon. He's not quite sure where Dad gets 16:00, because he's never seen a clock that went up that high.
He's good at counting, but even better at dates, because Dad is made up of a handful of numbers and months, and not much else. But Dean stands by "January 24th," "four days," and "no later than midnight" like they're more than they seem, and for now that's good enough for Sam. (He'd been asked once what his Daddy was like, by a lady who'd served him a tall glass of shirley temple, with the cherry in it and everything. He told her, "My dad is April 7th. He promised." She laughed. Maybe she'd known Dad was actually April 13th. Maybe 16:00 is Dad's code for "not today.")
Finally, Pastor Jim comes back. He asks Sam if his ceiling's as nice as the Sistine Chapel and Sam says yes, because Sam figures Pastor Jim wants to hear that this stupid white ceiling is as nice as his sister's, but Pastor Jim laughs like the shirley temple lady did and pulls something special from his pocket.
"Might I suggest you count these instead? It might help."
Beads. Beads like the ocean, all blue streaked with white veins, and beads like the sky, clouded white but otherwise clear. A dangling cross.
Pastor Jim places them in Sam's hands. These are Hail Marys; there are ten of them. This is Our Father. You say their names and move your fingers down the lines, like so.
It's a little strange. Sam's pretty sure Dad approves of the Cross (well, he threw it into a fully-drawn tub, once), but he's never spoken to it. So there's Our Father; his and Dean's. Hail Mary, Mom.
And well, Dean is turning ten soon, so that all works out well enough for Sam. Dean is the blue beads.
Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Our Father.
Pastor Jim chuckles and turns to leave. "May God be with you," he says.
Sam doesn't know what that means.
call waiting (i).
Pastor Jim's telephone is silent and his clock is not.
A call would've been nice. Sam doesn't know why he's expecting one, because when Dad is on business, he tends to stay that way until he walks in the front door. He doesn't call, just disappears. But Dean, he thought, maybe--
--Or maybe not.
Phone calls are like everything else Sam wants and will not get. To be in the habit of making and receiving phone calls, you have to have a phone, for one. And a consistent phone number. And a house. A house with working electricity and that the phone company knows is yours. They don't have that. Instead, they have a flurry of bad motels, some apartments if they're lucky. Life is hoarding the complimentary muffins from the good motels, living off your fat at the bad ones. Life is sitting in a car with Dean for fourteen hours, then stopping, and sitting in a motel room for fourteen more.
Sam's first best memory is waking up in the same bed for four months straight. He remembers pawing at the threadbare swatch on his bedsheets and delighting in the fact that it was there and he knew it would be. He remembers looking out the window (careful not to disturb the snowy layer of salt on the sill) and knowing he'd see the lady next door, parading around her flat in tap shoes and wearing what looked like a robe made out of crocodile garden hose.
Sam's first worst memory is watching Dean walk out the front door with Dad for four months straight, watching him walk out and leave him alone, at the mercy of Ms. Aliza Gallagher.
She is Dean's tap-dancing crocodile-wearing God-fearing substitute, and she is not a good one.
Four months pass and they hit the road again, and again it's fourteen hours of driving with Dean, and fourteen hours of waiting. But something's different.
It's different and it doesn't ever turn back.
School, genius, says Dean. It's right next to Hell; look it up. Sam loves school. (Sam loves school because he hates his brother, because how's he supposed to look it up if he can't read? And if Dean hates it, then it's Sam's duty to supply due affection to the offending item.
Dean hates salad-especially the red cabbage restaurants put in it, no matter what state you’re in or what kind of salad you order. Sam’s favorite. Dean likes Ohio license plates (at least, when they're in Ohio he does). Sam likes Alaska, because he's pretty sure he's never seen one. And he wouldn't know it if he did.)
But mostly, Dean likes going out with Dad; and Sam hates it when Dean goes.
"Just eat your salad." And Dean scowls, and Dad sighs, and it's really neither of them doing neither of those things, because it's Pastor Jim sitting across the table from him, and he's asking if he'd pass the dressing, please.
Because Dad and Dean are off having a grand adventure together, forgetting about him with an ease Sam can only hope to master as time drags on.
When he grows up and has adventures of his own, he will remember not to call.
After dinner, Sam lies under the covers and listens to Pastor Jim's snores. He excavates Pastor Jim's beads from his shirt pocket and twists one of the beads experimentally. He whispers, Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Our Father.
Pastor Jim made good on his promise.
He doesn't feel quite so alone. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Our Father. Until he goes drifts into sleep, Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Our Father.
fear (i).
The job is easy.
It can't go wrong.
The job is a perfect training ground for you, John tells Dean, and he's pretty sure he means it. Because Dean is nearly ten, and he's got to learn somewhere, right? It's just a nest of kelpies in Oakland Bay.
It's easy.
Of course, they are only seven hours out from a refueling in South Dakota, and Dean's making it full-obvious that the flight there is not so easy.
Dean's kept his eyes and his mouth clamped shut since take-off, but his body language is roaring bloody murder. His hands, white-knuckled, are vises on the seat cushion. His left foot taps out a jittery rhythm that is accompanied by the wet sound of his tongue sliding back and forth along his teeth. His breaths complete the little one man ensemble he has going in the back seat of the aircraft, staccato and syncopated.
"Don't waste your fear on something that's not gonna hurt you, kid." You know what's out there.
(Four months later Pan Am Flight 103 goes down. Dean tapes the clipping to the Impala's dashboard but says nothing. It's the tail end of the passive-aggression that he grows out of around the same time he starts sleeping with his knife. Sam inherits the attitude and as far as John knows, is going to keep it 'til the end of days. Nevertheless, John amends his statement. Don't scare from things you can't fix.)
Dean nods, Yessir, but the plane dips in the air and Dean's wordless, white-faced fearsong persists.
John redirects his attentions, full concentration on the controls in front of him.
It's nothing to worry about. Just turbulence.
Turbulence. John hasn't flown in a long time. In fact, he's pretty sure the last time he went up, it was with Joe Shilling, Air Force vet, and he himself had done very little of the actual flying. But John knew aircraft theory to the letter, and that just had to be enough.
It was going to be enough.
Sometime between John's keeping tabs on Dean and keeping tabs on the sky, the world dons its evening blues. Above the cloud cover, everything is listless, matte. The plane's lights send a scattershot of red-yellow-white across the landscape directly ahead, but even these stop short, brilliance cleaved in two by lack of contrast. John imagines this is what Hell looks like. Nothing moves, and there is nothing you can do to change it.
It should be Heaven, judging from the location. But at this point John is so turned around he's not sure where they are. The dials and gauges are not beneficial. It is midnight, it has been ten hours, and they have flown consistently southwest. By John's estimations, this means two things: They need to land and refuel, and that landing probably won't be disastrous, because they won't have hit the Pacific quite yet.
"Beech Duchess 76. Beech Duchess 76, come in. You are flying in restricted airspace. Supply identifying information immediately."
Of course.
His name is Joe Shilling, he says; he's from Lawrence, Kansas; and no, he did not die in 1974. John has a funny way of memorializing his friends, but he hopes they understand that he is grateful.
--
Dad knows what he's doing. And that almost makes it worse, because Dad knows what he's doing, and Dad knows what it's doing to him. Dean's probably going to drown in his own spit, because swallowing draws too much of his attention away from Not Dying to be truly appropriate at the moment. It doesn't help that his stomach is already turned to kelpie or whatever the hell is waiting for them in California. (Why couldn't they have driven? Why couldn't they have borrowed some money, got the car back? Why did it even land in the impound lot in the first place? Why did Pastor Jim even have a plane? Why were they flying in it? Why was California so far away? Why why why--?)
On second thought.
If he's busy swallowing he'll be too busy to cry, which is where he's pretty sure his tight breaths, hitching up further and further in his throat, are headed. And Dean Winchester is nine years old. He's not gonna cry.
Shoulders, relax. Throat, deconstrict. Kelpie-fied stomach?--quit the panicked flip flops. Dean takes a deep breath and the airplane nosedives sharply, overtaken by a stray crosswind. Dean gasps, chokes, and doesn't stop coughing until Dad sorts the plane out and they're flying as smoothly as is possible in a little tin death trap. Dad knows what he's doing. As he coughs he draws in deep gulps of air--the calming breaths he doesn't want Dad to hear, though he's not quite sure why.
Dad's not blind, after all.
The airplane takes a swandive and leaves Dean's stomach somewhere up above the clouds.
"Beech Duchess 76. Beech Duchess 76, come in. You are flying in restricted airspace. Supply identifying information immediately."
Dad grunts something, which is lost in the shuddering racket the plane is making. Pastor Jim will not be pleased if this thing doesn't make it to California. Dean will not be pleased if they do not make it back to grab Sammy, and never do this again.
They spiral lower, lower, lower, finally breaking the cloud barrier. There's nothing below them, and nothing above. They are nowhere.
"Beech Duchess 76. Beech Duchess 76, come in. You are flying in restricted airspace. Supply identifying information immediately."
Plane swerves again. The anxiety has moved past Dean's stomach and bled into everything else, jellied and kelpied and it's like there isn't anything else left. His grip is fear and his scowl is fear and the stars dancing in front of his screwed-shut eyes, that's fear, too. Imagination.
"--restricted airspace. Supply identifying information--"
Dad shuts the radio down. Shuts everything down but the lights and the engine. And Dean shuts down because if he's gonna die, he doesn't want the last thing he sees to be the back of his dad's head as it flies through the windshield of a crashing plane.
Nevertheless, he's pretty sure it's the last thing he's going to feel.
--
Something is wrong.
"Beech Duchess 76. Beech Duchess 76, come in. You are flying in restricted airspace. Supply identifying information immediately."
John's eyes snap to the radio. Everything is dark. Insistently, the message repeats. Again.
Again.
And John is in his element. This is not about static interference. This is not about flying a personal aircraft. This is about skirting evil, and for the last four years, there isn't anything John's been better at.
The message itself isn't immediately helpful. There is nothing suspicious about a tower flag. Maybe it came from a military base, the local airport. The former is more likely, given that apparently they're flying in a restricted zone--
--The plane groans like a woman scorned, but John pays her little mind. The cogs in his brain are turning, already mapping the case he's not even going to properly have 'til tomorrow. But the familiarity of process, the known unknown, is a conduit for conviction, and it's all muscle memory from here. It's as much a homecoming as any.
John pulls up slightly as the ground swims into view just below. 'S gonna be okay, kid, he wants to say. But during his lifetime, John has said that to so many poor dying bastards, the words don't mean what they used to. He can't say that now. Not here. Not to Dean.
The plane makes ground contact with a jolt, metal screeches like it probably shouldn't, but for a fugitive plane on a stretch of dirt, it's not bad. Dean makes a sound like pain, but John doesn't look back. Road's been clean and smooth as dirt gets, but that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way.
They barrel down the highway, far as their momentum takes them, a comet slicing through dark. They encounter nothing but brush and dirt and shards of brightness that are either broken glass or spots of rain wet.
Finally, they are still. John shuts everything down, 'til there's nothing to see but black and gray, and nothing to hear but Dean's choppy breaths, already fogging the windows (how cold can it be, in August? wherever they've landed) and the eternal drone from the phantom radio. Something's calling Beech Duchess. And however Jim worked this plane over, John's pretty sure it wasn't nearly enough.
ricochet.
Being sick just takes too much effort. Dean lies boneless in his seat and he's never going to move again. Nine hours of pure torture and suddenly the pall is lifted and life doesn't even have the decency to send relief his way. Just a jagged sense of loss and a desperate apprehension that doesn't even have a source anymore. He's still all wires; his muscles scream push but there's no pull, no tension. Like a broken Slinky. Once stretched, irreparable--it's right there on the warning label. Dean resolves to die on the spot.
But then, plane's already haunted. It'd be redundant.
Either way, Dean is not in a forgiving mood. Da--John Winchester forges onward as though Dean's forgiveness or lack thereof doesn't really register. The plane door creaks open, and John slides out. "Snap to, kiddo."
Dean's heart and stomach and lungs are an oily soup in his chest cavity, and he can't throw it up because he's misplaced his throat, too; and Da--John Winchester doesn't even care.
Typical.
But Dean snaps to, and makes his dazed way to John's side.
"Good thing there was an air strip here."
There's a glow off in the distance, faint but yellow with the tinge of artificial light. Airstrips have airports. Towers that don't like it when you land on their runway uninvited. Dean glances back at the flying deathtrap as they walk out toward the light. It's bent weirdly in some places, but it looks as smug as ever. He can just make out the droning radio, but he knows as well as John that whatever's sending the message, it's not a transponder, and there aren't people on the other end.
Ghosts and curses. Of course. Sometimes Dean thinks hunters are the reason all these things exist, not the other way around--what with the way evil finds them. They aren't even looking.
Evil is kelpies in California and that's it. End of story.
California's not all it's cracked up to be, if this is it. Bare land mostly. Evil is having nothing to look at but fuzzy yellow light in the distance.
Cold, still air that jackets can't keep out. Evil is wastelands not having thermostats.
Bits and pieces of things underfoot go crunch. Fine dust garnished with splintered wood and glass shards, like the aftermath of mass destruction. Evil is not having thick-soled shoes.
--
Dean appears to be blaming Russia and nuclear holocaust for everything. Evil is whatever guy said evil was ignorance, because that's stupid because you know what's out there, and--
John wonders what television and the tabloids are saying, because it's 1988, not the Cuban Missile Crisis. John's just going to ride this one out, because he doesn't want to risk prodding where Dean doesn't want to be poked. They can save the falling out for tomorrow morning, when they're rested and not wandering lost.
Same goes for Beech Duchess. Something's up, that's for sure, but they need information first. (And probably salt.) John has a silver throwing knife and a .45 on his person and an arsenal in his pack, but what he really needs is a history.
And a damn apology. If you're going to dole out information on a need-to-know basis, you better be damned sure people have it when they do need it. He and Jim are gonna have some words.
John scowls at Beech Duchess. Plane's not going anywhere, and judging from the landscape, it's not gonna hurt anyone. Silver lining.
In the background of John's thoughts, Dean continues his tirade breathlessly.
John is certain no one else finds The Day After as comforting a self-defense mechanism as his son does.
Dean is pale in the moonlight, sweaty from their flight (which did not bring them nearly as close to death as he seems to think) and shivering from their present desert trek.
John shrugs his jacket from his shoulders, disentangles it from the pack's straps, and drops it onto Dean's head.
Dean looks up, and wears it like a victory cape.
--
It doesn't mean anything close to I'm sorry and never will. But it means I know and that is good enough. Maybe better.
John Winchester is Dad again.
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