FIC: Lake Effect (2/2) - Complete
Title: Lake Effect
Author: kimonkey7
Rating: PG-13 for strong language
Pairings: none, teen!Dean, tween!Sam (gen)
Disclaimer: not mine, damn it.
Word Count: 14,866 total (parts one and two)
Summary: Pre-series. Perception of our own maturity is sometimes as murky as lake water.
A/N: The first 1400 words of this were flist-lock posted as a one-shot gift!fic for cuppa_char’s birthday back in February. She’d requested a little fanon to explain why, in one of my stories, I make Dean uncomfortable with bodies of water. Almost everyone commented, “This isn’t finished…” It is now. Huge thanks to hiyacynth, quellefromage, and everybetty on this one.
Part One
Part Two:
It was all anger and dread and confusion as he stomped through the woods. I’m killing you, you evil bastard. Whatever you are. I’m sending you back to Hell. He’d heard his dad talk like that before; when John Winchester was balls to the wall, packing duffels, packing pistols; all wired for a mission. The words felt foreboding and new in Dean’s head. But he was ready - right? He was ready. He was ready for the hunt. Had to be, because he didn’t think he’d live if he went under one more time.
The lake looked the same; deserted, still, unimposing. Full-up on shoes. He took two long strides onto the shore and stopped, halfway between the trees and the lap of tiny waves. When he squinted, he could make them out: a lone tennis shoe and a pair of red and white dime store flip-flops.
HIS shoe and flip-flops.
“Motherfucker.”
The butt of the shotgun hopped to his shoulder and he scanned the lake, leading with both barrels. Come on, come on… Nothing. No people, no ducks, no sailboats, couldn’t hear a toad croak. NOTHING.
Except for that kid standing on the raft.
“Fuck.”
HE wasn’t there before.
Eight thousand kinds of wrong, eight thousand things wrong with this picture, and Dean heard every single one click through his brain in the millisecond it took for the thing to move one hundred yards inshore. Straight toward Dean.
“Stay with me.”
“Don’t you move,” Dean tried to yell, but he couldn’t tell his volume for his heart pounding in his ears.
Heard him or not, the creature wasn’t listening; it glided forward once more, barely skimming the water’s surface, lissome body glowing orange from the sun.
“Don’t you move again,” Dean said, almost sadly. Because now it was HIS body not listening; he could feel the coolness of the water between his toes, and looked down to find himself ankle-deep in Pencil Lake. Don’t you do this, Dean Winchester. You’re stronger than this. Be stronger than this.
The ghost-boy halved the distance again.
When Dean looked close, he thought the thing was smiling.
“Stay with me. Here, with me.” And then it was right in front of him, reaching out with pale arms.
*******************************************************************
Sam had finished crying out his anger two or three minutes after Dean left. He sat up, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and sniffed and humped his way off the bed and into their dad’s room.
He’d put back Dad’s journal right where he was supposed to; the spot it occupied if it wasn’t in Winchester hands: bedside nightstand, in a drawer if available. It was the same place you could find a bible in any motel room across the country and, even at ten, Sam had stayed in his fair share.
He remembered something he’d read in the journal a while back. Under the heading ’Water Creatures’ John Winchester had catalogued a good fifteen monsters which were known lake dwellers. There wasn’t a lot of specific information Sam recalled, but he thought there might be something to help Dean - since Dean didn’t seem all that much interested in helping himself.
Hopping onto the bed, Sam laid the journal in his lap. The front pages were worn and buff on the edges and corners, the paper slightly warped from their father’s heavy hand and thoughts. Sam treated the book as reverently as he did the texts Pastor Jim kept in his special library. He found the page he was looking for and his eyes tracked through the information, lips silently mouthing the words. The fourth entry made Sam’s belly tingle:
Nix (also Nixie, Näcken, Nokk) - org. AS nicor/OG nihus: German/Scandanavian. Appear as woman, woman/fish, male, fish, snake, horse. Lure victims into water by enchantment. Recovered bodies show death by drowning; bruising of chest, wrists, ankles. Some legends mention appeasement through offering: three drops blood, whiskey/snuff/tobacco, sacrifice of black animal. { }
The empty bracket at the end of the entry meant no number; meant their dad had never run into a nix. Sam’s fingers felt a little numb, and he squeezed both hands into fists on either side of the book. But you don’t know that’s what it is. And if Dad’s never run into one, they might not even be real. But that thought was bunk, because Dad had trained them not to doubt what COULD be out there. And he’d also taught them to trust their gut. Sam’s was screaming for him to hurry up and find Dean.
*******************************************************************
He didn’t want to open his eyes because he knew where he was. He could feel the pressure on his ears, feel the coolness all around him. Oh, God…He knew where he was.
The pain in his chest was amazingly intense. He’d never experienced anything close to it; like someone was flashing swords of ice inside his ribcage. Like a crazy fucking FROZEN NINJA MOVIE taking place in his lungs.
Not FAIR!
Oh, stupid.
So weak!
It was dark. It was dark when he finally relented and allowed his eyes to open. He only knew he was facing the bottom of the lake because his knees were killing him; sharp rocks digging into, poking at, cutting his unprotected flesh. His hands were pinned at his sides, and he couldn’t move except to look down.
Pale arms, luminescent and ropy like eels, circled his chest. Maybe it was a trick of the water; how the thing’s arms seemed to ebb and flow under and through his skin. Back out again. Releasing tiny walls of bubbles. But it didn’t feel like a trick.
Oh, God. This is really happening…
He unhinged his clenched jaw, opened his mouth to scream; for help or warning or just - oh, please, no! PLEASE. His yell was nothing under all the weight of the water. Warble-y and shrill. A stream of bubbles roiled and skated from his throat to the far-above surface. When he breathed back in, all that came was water. It hurt as much as tears, as much as anything. A few stray orbs of trapped, encapsulated air escaped from his nostrils and tickled their way up his face and across his eyes.
Dean let his lids drop again.
*******************************************************************
Sam ran as fast as his legs would let him, and that was fast. Fast for ten, and fast for him - because he was clumsy, sometimes. He tripped a lot. But he was focused on the trail; hopping gnarled roots and side-swiping low twigs. He was focused on his brother.
Please, please, please, don’t let anything happen to him. Please, let him be okay. Please, let him be there. Please, please, please, I’ll do ANYTHING. Please.
He’d brought his BB gun with him. Had no idea why, except…Dean had brought a gun with him. And something was wrong. Something was wrong and Sam knew it, and knew he’d never be able to shoot one of Dad’s guns. Not well enough to help Dean. Bringing the Daisy was dumb, and a baby move, and Dean would laugh at him and tease him about it later, FOREVER, and Sam would let him.
He skittered out of the copse of trees, faltering and coming to a halt in the sand. The sun was starting to set, and the whole lake was bathed in a tangerine glow. It made the water look like terra cotta, and Sam’s hands came up to his forehead, cupping his brow, to shield out the extra light.
He scanned right and left, along the shoreline and then back around the other way. There was something on the raft, but he couldn’t tell what; too small to be Dean. Just three little lumps. He scoured the sand around him, saw the imprint of footsteps, but nothing he could identify as having been made by his brother’s boots. And then his eyes jumped back to what he’d thought for a second was a rock or a piece of driftwood.
Right there. At the water’s edge.
Oh, no, no, no…
The black metal barrels of the shotgun, sticking out from the lake like some prehistoric fish that never quite made it to land. Sam surged forward and fell to his knees where the sand grew darker with the gentle lap of waves.
It was sacrilege. A horrible, unforgivable sin to treat one of their father’s weapons this way. Dean would never have let this happen. Not if he could help it.
Sam slid the double barrel from the lake, his air rifle dropped carelessly to the side. Water dripped and drizzled from the nose of the shotgun when he tilted it. His fingers ghosted over the darkened wet wood of the stock.
Nix.
His head shot up and he frantically scanned the water.
…bruising of chest…
He pulled in a sharp draw of air.
…death by drowning…
“Dean!”
Why aren’t you here, Dad?
“DEEEEAN!”
To his right, a parliament of shrikes sprang from the cedars and drew his attention.
Butcher birds. That’s what Dean and Dad called them, because they impaled their prey on sharp twigs and barbed-wire; came back for them after they were dead. Grasshoppers and moths and little lizards and stuff…
He scrambled back when the cool, electric water touched his knees. It felt wrong on his skin; like an ice cream cone licking HIM.
“Dean? You better not be playin’!”
He noticed the drop in temperature, and how a mist had begun to settle over the purple surface of the lake.
…three drops blood, whiskey, black animal…
“DEAN!”
Three drops blood. I’ve got blood. I’ve got blood I can give… Sam pushed himself up from the sand, hands wrapped tightly around both guns.
There was half a six-pack of Pabst in the fridge. He hadn’t seen Dad with a bottle in a long time, so no chance of whiskey. But the beer might be okay-enough. It got people drunk, right?
‘You can’t play loosey-goosey with spells, boys. Magic’s like a diner: no substitutions. Improvisation’s often the last refuge of the damned.’
Sam hadn’t ever really figured out the vocabulary around the ‘damned’ part, but he understood ‘no substitutions’. He knew that meant the waitress never let him have French fries instead of mashed potatoes when he ordered the meatloaf. He’d had more than one BIC pen point out those very words on menus all over the US. So, no. Not the beer. That wouldn’t work. But he knew where he could get tobacco. That just left the animal. And the thought of that stopped him cold.
A black animal. What was he supposed to do? Shoot a bear with his BB gun? Or shoot a bat. Or a bird.
The shrikes had returned to the tree, calling with a trill that said, ‘shack-shack-shack’. Sam could see their crimson bellies, but their cloaks were black, he knew that. Their wings and tails and heads and backs; those were black as coal.
*******************************************************************
When he breathed in, it would be water again. And it would hurt less, again. Like the breath before had, and the breath before that, and the breath before that one. The knowledge terrified him, and the salt water it brought to his eyes squeezed into anonymity amidst the lake water. The few bubbles his mute sob produced were small and quick, and he watched them rise with an overbearing doom.
Stupid! Stupid, Dean! You can’t even fight it ‘cause you don’t know what it is!
He pulled down with his hips, knees sliding slightly forward on the jagged rocks, and tried his best to shimmy his arms free.
Sam was right. He’s TEN and he was right. Dad would know. Dad would have known what it was before he ever got out a single weapon.
There was a slip, like the last bit of air had made his chest smaller than the circle of the sprite-thing’s arms. His elbows flared with stiff pain, but he got his hands up far enough to grab the arms of the creature.
Its flesh was like a sponge, and his fingers sunk in when he ringed its forearms. How can it be…How can it hold me so tightly? But he didn’t care. Really didn’t. He let the thought pass, and squeezed even harder, pulling his knees forward across the stony bottom.
A fan of bubbles burst past his head at both sides, the spray parting the short hairs at the back of his neck. The monster’s shriek was a siren in his head.
He pushed. Pushed hard, with everything he had. And for a single shining second, he was sailing like a missile toward the surface, apologies to Sammy and excuses to his dad forming like explosions in his brain until the hand around his ankle damped them out like a light.
*******************************************************************
He did it without even thinking: pumped the action, squinted down the sight, and pulled the trigger. Of course he hit his mark. It wasn’t that far a shot, and he’d been trained by both Dad and Dean.
The third shrike over, second branch up, hopped with a ‘peep’ when the BB passed through its skull. It fell to the ground as the other birds took to the sky.
He didn’t know what else to do.
…black animal…
Because something had Dean. Something bad had his brother and - damn it, Dean! - Sam didn’t know what to do except try to help him.
Its head dropped to the side as he picked it up. A misty spray of blood landed on its chest and disappeared immediately in the scarlet of the feathers there. The body of the tiny shrike sent warmth through his palm that made his stomach turn. He shoved the bird into the front pocket of his hoody, gathered up both guns, and headed back through the woods.
It was harder to maneuver this time. The sun was mostly down, and the moon didn’t penetrate the thick evergreens like the yellow daylight. He tripped a few times, landed once on his stomach, and threw up when he felt the cool, wet lump in his pocket press against his skin.
He rose and ran, made it out of the woods, and dropped the guns on the front porch of the cabin. It was a mile to Minnie’s store, a mile to the tobacco. He sprinted down the left hand rut of the drive that fed to the main road and lead into town.
*******************************************************************
What the hell were you thinkin’, Dean?
He could hear his dad plainly in his head, yelling and cursing and telling him what a stupid, impulsive shit he’d been. He hated it, hated hearing that truth while he died. As he was dying. He might already be dead.
But his dad’s voice crowded out the coos of the thing, shouted down the whispers of ‘See? With me? Breathe with me. You can breathe with me…Stay with me.’
He didn’t want to hear that. Didn’t want to breathe unless he was drawing in oxygen. Cool, sweet air.
You should have known, Son. That was an asshole move, runnin’ off half-cocked. No good hunter goes in without taking every weapon he has. That includes his head. That includes his knowledge.
His dad was right. He knew he was right. Dean had made a mistake. Fucked up big time. He knew better, now, and wished he’d known better then. He hoped his dad would be back soon. He didn’t want Sam to be with Minnie for too long. Didn’t want his brother to worry.
His dad was going to be pissed. His dad was…God, where was his dad? He wanted his dad. Needed his dad. Dad…
‘Here, with me,’ the thing whispered in his skull.
He couldn’t even imagine how his dad was going to blow when he found out he’d died because of some stupid lake fairy.
*******************************************************************
Sam had run about a quarter of a mile when a set of headlights passed, flipped a bitch, and pulled up alongside him. His tennis shoes skidded to a stop in the gravel, and he came face to face with Minnie in her Duster.
“Sam Winchester! What’re you doin’ runnin’ blind on the side of the road, eh?”
Sam leaned in the window, “I need a cigarette.”
It was clearly not the response the woman had expected, and she snorted a laugh, pulling streams of blue smoke up her nose. “Ain’t you a little young? Where’s your brother?”
Sam’s mouth opened and closed like a Muppet’s.
“Spit it.”
Sam’s head shook back and forth. He thrust his hand inside the car, fingers pinching and grabbing at the smoky air. “Just one cigarette, Minnie. Please. I won’t smoke it, I promise.”
The woman looked down at his greedy palm. Her Pall Mall drooped, and the long white ash dropped like a log from its end. “’S ‘at blood, yah?”
He pulled his hand back when Minnie went to grab it. He realized he’d been cradling the shrike in his pocket as he ran. There were ruddy streaks across his palm, black-red dried in the chains of lines on his fingers. “Minnie, please…” he said, and then burst into tears.
She reached across and yanked the passenger door handle, pushed the door open with her fingers. “Get in.”
He shook his head, tears flying from his eyes. “Huh-uh. Dean’s in trouble. He needs me, Minnie.”
“He’s at the lake, yah?”
Sam sniffed deeply, nodded.
“Get in the car,” she said.
Sam did.
*******************************************************************
He lay on the bottom, fingers dug into the velvety silt between the rocks. The small boulder the water freak had placed on his chest should probably have hurt more than it did, but he figured that was how he knew he was dead. So, there was that.
He didn’t think he was dead in the TRADITIONAL way. Not, like, DEAD dead. But there was no way he could imagine ever leaving the lake alive. Not when he was pinned to its floor like a feather-weight wrestler. Damn it, this is so bad. If he WASN’T dead, Dad was going to kill him for sure.
The sprite-thing wasn’t around. He didn’t know where it had gone. He didn’t know what it wanted or what more it would do to him. He really didn’t care. Didn’t care at all. He tried to move the rock again, but couldn’t get his arms to work quite right. He felt numb, but still cold. Heavy like cement, and light as a feather. He wondered if maybe his mom might swim by. He imagined her blond hair floating past him in the water, billowing like yellow silk. It was a nice thought.
The yellow descended, filled his senses, and then bloomed: dark orange, magenta, purple, and finally, black. Black, black, black, and cold. Bloomed to nothing; not the monster, not the lake, not the rock, not the fight. Not the yellow silk of his mother’s hair, soft against his cheek.
*******************************************************************
“What’s your plan?”
Sam stared at Minnie with wide eyes. “What?” It was totally WEIRD to have a grown-up ask a kid what the plan was. A TEN-YEAR-OLD kid.
“You got a plan, yah?”
“Yeah. I got a plan,” he told her, fingertips brushing gently against the tail feathers of the shrike in his pocket.
They stood at the back end of the beach, snake grass hissing in the breeze just behind them. The lake was shrouded in fog at the shoreline, and the moon made the water’s surface shine like a sheet of ice.
Minnie looked different to Sam without a cigarette in her mouth, with most of her lipstick rubbed away by nervous hands. She looked younger in the moonlight. He cocked his head and squinted at her. She knew something. Something she wasn’t telling him. It made him scared and mad and worried all at once.
He knew they should be hurrying. It had been so much longer than an hour. Much too long for Dean to be gone and maybe out there. In the lake somewhere. “It’s a nix, right?”
Minnie nodded. “Think so, yah.”
Sam nodded back and reached for the Pall Mall she was holding out for him. He slipped it from her fingers and into his pocket next to the bird.
Minnie looked at him for a second, then back out at the lake. She reached behind her head and removed a necklace from under her blouse. A silver pendant, shaped like a four-leaf clover, dangled from the silver chain. Minnie brought the bauble to her lips and kissed it lightly, then stepped forward in the sand and slipped it over Sam’s head. “St. Christopher,” she said, as if that explained everything.
Sam looked down at the medal and then at Minnie.
“Don’t let your feet get wet, yah?” she said. “Stay back from the edge of the water. Whatever you’re gonna do.”
He nodded and turned, taking a few steps toward the lake. He stopped suddenly and looked back at her, forlorn. “I need a knife,” he told her. “For the blood.”
“I got clippers,” said Minnie. She slid her purse off her elbow, where it had previously rested like any other grandma purse Sam had ever seen. She rooted through its contents and produced a small, shiny set of fingernail trimmers. “It’ll hurt more, to make a cut deep enough for the blood, but it’s all I got.”
Sam nodded and shrugged. Reached out his hand and shrugged again, just because there was too much nodding already. “The nix is gonna give Dean back,” he said, to the clippers more than to Minnie.
“I hope, yah…” he heard her whisper as he started once more for the water’s edge.
He didn’t know if he was supposed to say anything, or make the offerings in a certain order. Their dad had obviously never expected to meet up with a nix, hadn’t given specific instructions for the sacrifice - or maybe he’d just memorized the things to say and never written them down. The idea of that made Sam a little dizzy; the idea and the worry and Dean under the water somewhere.
He stopped himself six inches from the darkest swatch of sand. Pulling the cigarette from his pocket, he leaned forward slightly and crushed it over the water. The thin paper ripped between the pinch and press of fingers and thumb, and Sam watched the brown hairs of tobacco settle on the surface of the lake. He glanced once over his shoulder, but Minnie said nothing. There was more nodding. Then Sam took the shrike from his pocket.
The bird felt cold, small black feet drawn up to its belly. Sam ran his thumb across its crimson chest, tugged gently at one of its wings. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in his heart and head. He bent and placed the bird at the edge of the drifting tobacco spill. It bobbed once and then settled, body a black ink spot on the white surface of the lake.
Quickly, before he could think about pain or fear, or yes or no, he pulled up the levered arm of the nail clippers, swung it round, and set the trimmer’s sharpened jaws around a hem of skin on his left index fingertip.
The divot of flesh dropped to the sand with the clippers. He had just enough time to cup his right hand beneath his left and the blood was flowing, hot and red. He leaned forward, hands over the lake, and carefully allowed three drops of scarlet to escape into the water. The third one sizzled when it hit. And because Sam needed to say something, he whispered, “Please, just give him back.”
He retreated a foot, balled his left hand into a fist, and crammed it in his pocket. It burned and stung and bled there, like the pad of his finger had been attacked by a teeny, tiny shark.
A small whirlpool formed at the center of the shag of tobacco. Sam watched the undersized funnel swirl on the surface, twirling the brown shreds as if a drain had opened beneath them. The whirl caught his blood, and he watched the drops drag out like highway brake lights in the rain. Along the edge of the circle, the shrike bobbed gently and began to follow the spin.
He felt Minnie’s old hands on his shoulders, cold and shaking, through his sweatshirt. “Something’s happening.”
“Yah…” she whispered.
The speed of the whirl increased, the funnel deepened. Low, as if skimming the surface of the water, an angry shriek loosed itself across Pencil Lake. Sam stiffened the same time Minnie’s fingers squeezed tight. She pulled him back another foot as foamy, bearded waves pushed their way onto the sand just inches from where he stood.
The dead shrike spun like an airplane plummeting to earth. It tipped over the edge and into the cyclone at the same time the unearthly scream ended. Sam watched the bird disappear just as a white fountain of spray erupted next to the raft. Dean shot up like a beach ball held beneath the waves.
“Dean!”
He struggled, but Minnie managed to somehow hold him to his spot. Both their eyes were on Dean. He was floating face down a few feet from the raft; still, pale. So pale in the moonlight.
“Lemme go! I have to get him, Minnie! I have to get him now!”
Minnie turned him to her roughly, bent down in his face. “Whatever it is, it likes its young boys, eh?”
He licked salty tears from his lips and said nothing.
“You know how to drive, Sam?”
Drive? What was she talking about? He looked back over his shoulder at the white spot that was his brother, bobbing lifeless on the surface of the now-dark lake. Dean was in the WATER.
She shook him once; a quick jerk, and his face pivoted back to hers. “Your daddy teach you to drive?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Minnie released his shoulders and he felt the pressure of her fingers linger for a few seconds. He watched her dive into her purse and emerge with a ring of keys. She flipped through and found the one topped with a purple plastic sleeve. She held it out to him.
“This one’s the ignition, yah? If I don’t come right back out with him, you get in the Duster and drive to Cooper’s. Tell Butch. He’ll know what to do.”
But he didn’t want to be the wait-er again. Didn’t want Minnie to not come back like Dean hadn’t come back. His head shot around to the water again.
“Even if it’s…gone. You’re too little to swim ‘im back.”
She was right, Minnie was right. He nodded his way back to facing her. “You a good swimmer, Minnie?”
“Absolutely the best,” she said, and touched his cheek so sweet and brief it mightn’t have happened at all.
She was out of her crepe soles and ankle deep in when he called her name. She turned.
He ran up to her, keys jingling in his pocket, careful to keep his toes back from the water’s edge. He worked Minnie’s necklace over his head, brought the saintly medal to his lips, and kissed it. He didn’t feel foolish at all. “St. Christopher,” he said.
When she leaned toward him, he slipped it around her neck like an Olympic judge.
She turned back to the lake, took two giant strides, and dove beneath the surface.
*******************************************************************
Dean wasn’t breathing when Minnie dragged him to shore. He was ashen and motionless in a horrible, scary way. Minnie laid him carefully on his back. She bent back his head and blown her breath into him. She drew away with a cough; brown water poured from Dean’s mouth like a faucet.
Minnie flipped him, then. Turned his head to one side, brought his arms up, brought up the leg on the side she faced him. More water flowed, ugly and dark, from between Dean’s slack lips. She ran her trembling hands over his belly, pushing and rolling until the stream of liquid from Dean’s mouth trickled to a stop. She shifted him to his back again; breathed into his mouth and pumped against his chest until he coughed and moaned and sputtered.
She sent Sam over to the car, this time with a green-sleeved key, to get blankets from the trunk. He marveled at her strength when, once they’d got him all wrapped and tucked, she cradled Dean in her arms and marched with him to the car.
She ordered Sam into the passenger side and maneuvered Dean across his lap. “You hug ‘im tight and keep ‘im warm, yah?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. And he did his best.
*******************************************************************
When they reached the hospital in Alba, Dean was still unconscious, still blue and awful looking. Breathing, yes, and heart beating, but those were the only quiet signs he was alive.
The nurses and orderlies grabbed Dean from Minnie’s arms and rushed him toward the doors of the ER. Sam heard just a jumble of shouts: stage three hypothermia, secondary drowning, oxygen, lavage, possible brain damage. The last one brought his tears back full force, and he let them fall, unabashedly, against Minnie’s damp shoulder.
He felt terrible and selfish and eternally grateful when, despite the nurse’s urging, Minnie said she was fine. All she needed was some dry clothes, a blanket, a cigarette, and a shot of whiskey. She wasn’t going back into that ER and leave him all by himself, she told the nurse, and shooed her away with a shaky hand. Sam hugged her tighter, then. Tried to keep her warm.
Minnie’d changed into a set of scrubs and a pair of slipper socks. She had a blanket draped over her shoulders, and one of the orderlies had brought her a cup of coffee. Sam didn’t know if there was whiskey in it.
She looked like a big, old kid, he thought; fresh out of the tub, wrapped in pajamas and blankets, just about ready for bed. She told him to stay with her purse while she talked to the doctor over by the admissions desk.
Sam pressed against the tape and gauze covering his index finger. Minnie’d made sure they tended to him while she’d changed out of her wet clothes. They’d told him if they stitched the self-inflicted clipper wound, he’d end up with a funny pucker. He’d have to put up with it healing on its own, being tender for a while. He pressed harder and strained to hear what the doctor was telling Minnie about Dean. Through all of it, Minnie’s face stayed sad and worried until she turned to him.
“Sam. Bring me my purse.”
He hauled it over and she dug out a battered address book.
“You stay right here,” she said, pointing at the doctor. “I’ll get his dad on the phone.”
The doctor nodded and waited while Minnie wrestled the big phone over the counter and punched out the numbers to summon John Winchester. Sam swung Minnie’s purse back and forth, banging it against his leg, and imagining the electric ring of the phone in his head.
“John? Minnie Mueller.”
He thought Minnie Mueller was a pretty funny name, but hearing his dad’s spoken just before had prevented the emergence of a smile or snigger.
“John, I need you to get to Alba as soon as possible…No, no, listen to me. The job can wait. I got your boys here at the hospital. St. Grace’s.”
He held the purse in both hands so it dangled in front of his knees. He bounced it there, dipping and rising, and kept his eyes on the titled floor.
“Dean got into some trouble in the lake and-Now, hang on just a second. He’s-John, listen to me, will ya? I got the doctor right here, and he can-“ Minnie pulled the receiver from her ear and passed it with a grimace to the reluctant doctor.
“Mr. Winchester? Hello, I’m Dr. Ballard. I’ve-Yes, Mr. Winchester. Right now we-“
Sam heard his dad yelling through the phone, watched the doctor frown and nod and try to get a word in. Minnie walked him back to the bank of chairs on the far side of the waiting room. Sat, and pulled him down next to her.
“Your dad’ll be here soon, yah? He’s on his way soon as he’s off that phone.”
“What did the doctor say about Dean?”
She drew him in closer, edging the blanket around both their shoulders. “Said they’re doin’ everything they can.”
Which didn’t sounded like enough to Sam. He wanted her to say they’d fixed him. That he was okay. That when their dad got there, he could take them home and yell and scream and rip them both a new one. Even THAT seemed better than ‘…they’re doin’ everything they can.’
“Dean’s gonna be okay, right?”
“They’re doin’ everything they can,” Minnie said again, and it made Sam want his dad with a wild desperation.
*******************************************************************
He arrived like a storm, with a gust of wind and rain from outside, and blew straight to the admissions desk. “John Winchester. You’ve got my boy here.”
“Dad!” Sam yelled, and sprinted across the small waiting room. He threw his arms around his dad’s waist and hugged him tightly. His dad smelled like damp gunpowder and sweat; smelled like a hunt. Sam hated it because the scent meant danger, but loved it because it meant his dad was back safe. Safe enough to touch and smell.
“Hey, dude. You seen Dean yet?” John squatted down, rubbing his hands over Sam’s compact frame, confirming his wellness, his wholeness.
He shook his head back and forth. “They wouldn’t let us see him ‘til you got here.”
Minnie stepped up creakily behind Sam, the physical strain of this evening finally staking claim in her back and legs and shoulders. “John.”
“Minnie,” he said, rising, gripping Sam’s thin shoulders in his hands. “You wanna tell me what the hell happened?”
Her wrinkled hand shot up, pointer finger like a gnarled twig. “Don’t you come at me with your guff and frustration. You know me better than to do that.”
The admitting nurse leaned across the counter toward them. “Mr. Winchester, Dr. Ballard’s been paged.”
John spun on the nurse. “And?”
She pulled back from his bark, shifted all her weight to one foot.
Sam recognized that reaction in people. Their dad caused it a lot when he was angry.
“And…he’s in with your son now. He’ll be with you in just a few minutes. In the mean time,” she dropped a clipboard on the countertop and slid it across to John, “I need your insurance, and I need these medical history forms completed.”
John made a sour face that Sam knew to read as ‘sorry’, but it just made the nurse cross her arms. John took the clipboard and ushered Minnie and Sam back over to the deserted waiting room.
“Now you wanna tell me what the hell happened?”
Sam didn’t understand why his dad was acting mad at Minnie. Minnie’d saved Dean’s life.
“You don’t get to be angry,” she said, shouting him down before he could interrupt. “You think that boy brought this on himself?”
“He went out to that lake-“
“He’s a fourteen year old boy, living in the woods. What the hell else is he gonna do?”
“Doctor said he has defensive wounds. Bruises and cuts that-“
“It was a nix, John,” she hissed. “You ever run into one?”
“He shouldn’t have-“
“You’re the one set the standard he was tryin’ t’ meet. You wanna be pissed, you’d best start with yourself, yah? Best be thankful, too, you got a son strong enough to survive what most don’t. You think about that before you go in there and look at your child, eh?”
Shame was not an emotion John wore well. Minnie was right, she was completely right and honest, but Sam still hated what that did to their dad; his face dropped and his shoulders followed.
Sam stayed quiet while their dad brewed. He knew this was the moment to always watch most carefully. Because this was the place between Good John Winchester and Angry John Winchester. Sam knew them both, and he had a preference.
The clipboard of forms slapped a mini drum riff against John’s thigh, and then his head bobbed in time for a minute. His free hand ran roughshod through his beard. “Doctor said you did CPR at the lake. Probably saved Dean’s life.”
Minnie didn’t say a thing, so Sam did. “She swum him in from the raft, Dad. And she did CPR. He wasn’t breathin’.”
The drumming stopped but the nodding stuck. Sam felt something wet hit his upturned face.
“Thanks for that,” their dad said, and Minnie nodded in return.
*******************************************************************
John Winchester had seen many sights in his forty-odd years, but none buckled him as completely as that of his eldest in that hospital bed.
The doctor had explained to him how Dean had come in nearly dead; breathing shallowly, lungs and stomach filled with water, heart beating just a few times a minute. The temperature of the lake had probably helped save him as much as the liquid in his lungs had nearly drowned him. And maybe, just maybe, the hypothermia had saved Dean any permanent brain damage from oxygen deprivation.
Maybe, the doctor had said. They wouldn’t know until Dean woke up.
They were still working warmed saline through his son’s system, another IV delivering necessary antibiotics to stave off infection in the cuts on Dean’s legs, knees, and foot. The bandages on his knees were stained with discharge black as spilled coffee. A chest tube was sutured into his side, trailing from a spot between his two lowest ribs to a bag collecting murky, brown lake water. The green nasal canula lay like a snake across Dean’s face, stark against his pale skin.
John sat stiffly in a bedside chair, cradling a Styrofoam cup of vending machine caffeine that had long gone cold. He didn’t think his stomach could take the harsh acidity; it was already roiling and flipping and treating him cruelly. It had teamed up with his brain and his heart for an unending round of punishment: guilt, love, terror, regret. All of those things woven into the hairshirt of self-flagellation and recrimination John wore for the life he’d given his sons, for the questioning of that life.
If it weren’t for the hunt, he’d have been there. If it weren’t for the hunt, they WOULDN’T have been there. If it weren’t for the training, for the drills, the circumstances, Mary’s death - all of it, none of it - Dean would be safe and sound and somewhere else. Somewhere normal. But that road…that road was ten years gone for the Winchesters, and John sat with that knowledge biting into him.
He placed his hand flat against Dean’s chest, his ire rising as the outline of his own fingers and palm imitated that of the nix’s. The mulberry mottling of bruises seemed to serve as a barrier between his hand and the gentle rise and fall of his son’s breathing.
“I’m so sorry, Dean,” he whispered.
*******************************************************************
He was awake a long time before he opened his eyes. His lids felt brutally heavy, and he couldn’t trust for sure what he’d see when they lifted. He was freezing cold, muscles tense from shivering. There was something lying on his chest, but not as heavy as the boulder, not as scary and permanent.
He tried to wiggle his toes and realized he could, realized his feet weren’t inside boots, and he cursed in his head because - THREE FUCKING PAIRS OF SHOES! - and then he realized there wasn’t water between his toes. Wasn’t water between his fingers, but he couldn’t yet lift his arms. They felt tethered, and he imagined himself Gullivered to the bottom of the lake with lashes of seaweed and phytoplankton.
Except there wasn’t any water; no pressing weight of the lake on his face. There wasn’t water anywhere. Definitely not in his mouth and nose and ears and lungs.
He breathed in deep, coughed harshly, and opened his eyes when he felt hands on his shoulders, holding him down. He panicked because he expected the face of the water thing, but it wasn’t. It was his dad’s face, and that made him panic for a second more, until the relief flooded through him and he grabbed his dad and sobbed.
His dad’s hands ran up and down his back, cupped his head, shuffled through the short hairs on the back of his skull. “Hey, hey…It’s okay, Ace. You’re okay. You’re okay…” His dad eased him back down onto the bed.
Bed, I’m in a bed…“Where’s Sammy?” he tried to say, but it came out a croak and a cough. He cleared his sore throat and tried again. “Sammy okay?”
“Sam’s fine,” said his dad with a soft smile, brushing the bangs off his son’s forehead. “He’s out in the waiting room with Minnie.”
“Minnie?” Why was Minnie there? Why was HE there? HOW was he-? What-? “How did-? What happened?”
His dad’s brow gathered. “You don’t remember?”
He shook his head lightly. The lake. I remember…in the water, and… He looked at his dad, repentant frown pulling down at the corners of his mouth. “It took all my shoes.”
His dad’s face pinched and shattered. His large hands fumbled for the call button.
“Dad, your gun. The sh-sh-shotgun,” he moaned through a shiver.
“It’s okay, Dean. Jesus, son. It’s okay. Doesn’t matter.”
He felt his dad’s fingers twine between his and wanted to pull away; he didn’t deserve the comforting, didn’t deserve the forgiveness of his gentle hand. “I’m sorry.”
His dad sputtered, shook his head. “For what, kiddo?”
But before he could answer, there was a nurse there, responding to the call from the buzzer on his bedrail. His dad stepped aside while she checked all the tubes and wires and needles poking into him.
Dean stole glances at his body while the nurse worked, amazed the bruises were his, stymied by all the machines and lines and medical stuff going into and out of him. The nurse nodded to his dad, told him she’d page the doctor, and Dad nodded back, calling out ‘thanks’ as she left.
His dad moved back next to the bed and Dean tried to read his father’s face. He could usually tell what his dad was thinking, just by looking at him, but none of the anger he was expecting was there, only worry. And a sort of sad, silly smile.
“Am I okay?”
His dad laughed at that, long and hard, dopey grin growing and spreading all over him. “Yeah, Ace. You’re good. A-1.” He dropped his hand on Dean’s head and rubbed back and forth across his short hair.
Had he killed it and he just didn’t remember? Maybe he had a concussion. “Is it dead?”
John’s hand stilled on his head. “It’s taken care of, kiddo.”
His mind worked like a rusty mill; he couldn’t get the wheel to turn fast enough. Couldn’t power that spark of memory. His throat tightened and his chin puckered and pulled up. He didn’t care if he cried in front of his dad. He was angry and frustrated and just so fucking SCARED. “How?”
“Doesn’t matter, son.”
Hot tears spilled over his cheeks and his fists pounded against the mattress. “Yes, it does!”
“Hey, hey,” his dad said, rubbing his shoulder, now, placating and calm. “Dean. It’s okay, son. You’re safe now. It’s okay.”
“It’s not! I didn’t- I screwed up, Dad! I screwed up bad, and I-” He sucked in a breath and a wave of coughs hit. He tugged his arms around his middle as his aching lungs spasmed.
“Breathe, Dean. Just breathe. In through your nose, okay?”
He felt his dad’s nervous hands run huge circles on his back. It had me. I was dead. I was HIS and then-
‘Please, just give him back.’
He’d heard Sam’s voice through the water, and then the thing had screamed. It screamed and- “Sammy.”
“Sammy’s fine. Sammy’s safe, Dean.”
“It was Sammy,” he said, pulling in the stinging oxygen. “I heard Sammy’s voice.”
The circle pattern shifted into an up and down slide on his back.
“Sam and Minnie…They got it to release you and-“
“I’m sorry, Dad. I screwed up, sir. It’s all my fault.” And the silence that followed crushed him nearly as hard as the lake. Oh, God… His eyes squeezed shut and he fell back against the bed. Felt his dad’s hand slide away from behind him.
“Dean, listen to me. Yeah. You made a couple of mistakes. You didn’t listen to me, didn’t follow orders. And that thing got you, that evil son of a bitch got you. I don’t know how you survived, and goddamnit, son, I’m so glad you did. But I do know it wasn’t because you thought things through.”
His dad’s words sliced and cut and shamed him. He hadn’t thought, hadn’t prepared, he’d only wanted to kill that thing in the lake.
“I won’t forgive you risking your life because you didn’t use your brain. You’re too smart for that, Dean. And I’ll kick your ass every time I see you making that mistake. You have to think, son. You have to plan, or none of your other skills will ever keep you alive long enough to do any good.”
Right. His dad was right; he was stupid. God, he’d nearly got himself killed. Could have gotten SAMMY killed. Maybe Minnie, too. He had a sudden flash of her holding him, carrying him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Ace. Just…learn from it. Remember it for next time.”
Next time? “Yes, sir.”
“Hunting’s serious business. You can’t go in blind. You gotta plan…”
Sammy knew. Sammy said- “Yes, sir.” And the familiarity of this ebb and flow, the mistake and the forgiveness, was a life ring thrown by his dad. He grabbed on for all he was worth. Didn’t pull away, or even want to, when his dad’s hand found his again.
“It’s just, improvisation’s often the last refuge of the damned.”
It was a pardon, a pass; mercy that said, ‘We fall and then we get back up again…’
“What about MacGyver? He improvised all the time,” Dean said, squeezing his dad’s hand just a little tighter.
“Our name’s Winchester, sport.”
The door to the room swung in and Sam and Minnie entered, Minnie pushing his little brother forward, guiding him by the shoulders.
“Hi,” Sam said, looking scared and anxious.
Dean tried to scoot up straighter in the bed. “Hey, Sammy.” Then he cast a glance at Minnie, who nodded, and he nodded back.
Sam walked to the bed and gently touched his arm.
Dean saw the white bandage on his brother’s finger. “What happened?”
Sam’s boney shoulders hopped up in a shrug. “Got cut. It’s okay, though.”
Dean looked at his dad.
“He’s fine, Dean.”
Sammy squeezed his arm lightly, poked at it a little with his bandaged finger, ran the white gauze up the inside of Dean’s forearm. “I’m fine, Dean,” Sam said with a confident grin.
Behind Sam, Minnie made one of her noises; a grunt or a sneeze or a ‘screw you, John Winchester,’ Dean wasn’t really sure.
She was wearing blue scrubs like a doctor and there wasn’t a Pall Mall in sight. When she came close, his head got a little swimmy; something about the way she smelled that brought the lake right back to his chest. The taste of it in his mouth. Another slippery memory ghosted through his head and he swallowed hard.
“Thanks, Minnie,” he said, though he wasn’t sure exactly why he was saying it.
She just nodded.
Sam hoisted himself carefully onto his bed, pulling their dad’s journal up with him. He opened it and flipped through a few pages, stopped at one and smoothed the spine. “It was a nix, Dean. But it’s gone now.”
Sam smiled and placed the journal in Dean’s lap, looking expectantly at their dad.
A pen found its way from their dad’s front shirt pocket and into Sammy’s hand. Sam pointed at the journal and pushed the pen at Dean. “You gotta fill it in.”
He didn’t have a clue what Sam was talking about, or why his dad was still smiling. Why Minnie was so quiet and soft looking all of a sudden. “Huh?”
Sam’s eyes rolled. “You gotta fill it in, Dean. In Dad’s journal. Gotta put a one there, ‘cause now you know about nixes.”
He did. He knew all about them. But he suspected Sam and Minnie knew a little bit more. He shook his head and pushed the pen away.
“Come on, Ace. Your first entry,” his dad said, nodding at him.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t…It wasn’t…”
His dad leaned in closer. “The counts aren’t about kills, Deano. You know that. Marks are for knowledge. Learning. Go ahead.”
“Sammy should. Not me.”
His brother’s eyes were wide, head shaking back and forth fervently. “No way. It was you, Dean. You gotta do it.”
He pushed the proffered pen away again. “You did it right, Sammy. You make the mark.”
Sam looked from Dean to their dad and back again.
Minnie shifted and chuffed from the seat she’d taken at Dean’s bedside. “Seems to me, anybody survives a nix is one who defeated it, too, yah? But I’m just an old lady.”
“Both of you oughtta make it,” John said.
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t do anything except-“
His dad’s hand firmly gripped his shoulder. “You ever gonna make a jack-ass move like that again? You ever gonna go out without knowing what you’re dealing with?”
He shook his head again. “No, sir.”
His dad’s heavy hand squeezed once. “Good boy.”
“Come on, Dean,” Sam urged, bouncing a little on the bed.
Dean wrapped shaky fingers around Sammy’s hand, and together they made their first marks in this bible of their father’s.
End
Author: kimonkey7
Rating: PG-13 for strong language
Pairings: none, teen!Dean, tween!Sam (gen)
Disclaimer: not mine, damn it.
Word Count: 14,866 total (parts one and two)
Summary: Pre-series. Perception of our own maturity is sometimes as murky as lake water.
A/N: The first 1400 words of this were flist-lock posted as a one-shot gift!fic for cuppa_char’s birthday back in February. She’d requested a little fanon to explain why, in one of my stories, I make Dean uncomfortable with bodies of water. Almost everyone commented, “This isn’t finished…” It is now. Huge thanks to hiyacynth, quellefromage, and everybetty on this one.
Part One
Part Two:
It was all anger and dread and confusion as he stomped through the woods. I’m killing you, you evil bastard. Whatever you are. I’m sending you back to Hell. He’d heard his dad talk like that before; when John Winchester was balls to the wall, packing duffels, packing pistols; all wired for a mission. The words felt foreboding and new in Dean’s head. But he was ready - right? He was ready. He was ready for the hunt. Had to be, because he didn’t think he’d live if he went under one more time.
The lake looked the same; deserted, still, unimposing. Full-up on shoes. He took two long strides onto the shore and stopped, halfway between the trees and the lap of tiny waves. When he squinted, he could make them out: a lone tennis shoe and a pair of red and white dime store flip-flops.
HIS shoe and flip-flops.
“Motherfucker.”
The butt of the shotgun hopped to his shoulder and he scanned the lake, leading with both barrels. Come on, come on… Nothing. No people, no ducks, no sailboats, couldn’t hear a toad croak. NOTHING.
Except for that kid standing on the raft.
“Fuck.”
HE wasn’t there before.
Eight thousand kinds of wrong, eight thousand things wrong with this picture, and Dean heard every single one click through his brain in the millisecond it took for the thing to move one hundred yards inshore. Straight toward Dean.
“Stay with me.”
“Don’t you move,” Dean tried to yell, but he couldn’t tell his volume for his heart pounding in his ears.
Heard him or not, the creature wasn’t listening; it glided forward once more, barely skimming the water’s surface, lissome body glowing orange from the sun.
“Don’t you move again,” Dean said, almost sadly. Because now it was HIS body not listening; he could feel the coolness of the water between his toes, and looked down to find himself ankle-deep in Pencil Lake. Don’t you do this, Dean Winchester. You’re stronger than this. Be stronger than this.
The ghost-boy halved the distance again.
When Dean looked close, he thought the thing was smiling.
“Stay with me. Here, with me.” And then it was right in front of him, reaching out with pale arms.
*******************************************************************
Sam had finished crying out his anger two or three minutes after Dean left. He sat up, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and sniffed and humped his way off the bed and into their dad’s room.
He’d put back Dad’s journal right where he was supposed to; the spot it occupied if it wasn’t in Winchester hands: bedside nightstand, in a drawer if available. It was the same place you could find a bible in any motel room across the country and, even at ten, Sam had stayed in his fair share.
He remembered something he’d read in the journal a while back. Under the heading ’Water Creatures’ John Winchester had catalogued a good fifteen monsters which were known lake dwellers. There wasn’t a lot of specific information Sam recalled, but he thought there might be something to help Dean - since Dean didn’t seem all that much interested in helping himself.
Hopping onto the bed, Sam laid the journal in his lap. The front pages were worn and buff on the edges and corners, the paper slightly warped from their father’s heavy hand and thoughts. Sam treated the book as reverently as he did the texts Pastor Jim kept in his special library. He found the page he was looking for and his eyes tracked through the information, lips silently mouthing the words. The fourth entry made Sam’s belly tingle:
Nix (also Nixie, Näcken, Nokk) - org. AS nicor/OG nihus: German/Scandanavian. Appear as woman, woman/fish, male, fish, snake, horse. Lure victims into water by enchantment. Recovered bodies show death by drowning; bruising of chest, wrists, ankles. Some legends mention appeasement through offering: three drops blood, whiskey/snuff/tobacco, sacrifice of black animal. { }
The empty bracket at the end of the entry meant no number; meant their dad had never run into a nix. Sam’s fingers felt a little numb, and he squeezed both hands into fists on either side of the book. But you don’t know that’s what it is. And if Dad’s never run into one, they might not even be real. But that thought was bunk, because Dad had trained them not to doubt what COULD be out there. And he’d also taught them to trust their gut. Sam’s was screaming for him to hurry up and find Dean.
*******************************************************************
He didn’t want to open his eyes because he knew where he was. He could feel the pressure on his ears, feel the coolness all around him. Oh, God…He knew where he was.
The pain in his chest was amazingly intense. He’d never experienced anything close to it; like someone was flashing swords of ice inside his ribcage. Like a crazy fucking FROZEN NINJA MOVIE taking place in his lungs.
Not FAIR!
Oh, stupid.
So weak!
It was dark. It was dark when he finally relented and allowed his eyes to open. He only knew he was facing the bottom of the lake because his knees were killing him; sharp rocks digging into, poking at, cutting his unprotected flesh. His hands were pinned at his sides, and he couldn’t move except to look down.
Pale arms, luminescent and ropy like eels, circled his chest. Maybe it was a trick of the water; how the thing’s arms seemed to ebb and flow under and through his skin. Back out again. Releasing tiny walls of bubbles. But it didn’t feel like a trick.
Oh, God. This is really happening…
He unhinged his clenched jaw, opened his mouth to scream; for help or warning or just - oh, please, no! PLEASE. His yell was nothing under all the weight of the water. Warble-y and shrill. A stream of bubbles roiled and skated from his throat to the far-above surface. When he breathed back in, all that came was water. It hurt as much as tears, as much as anything. A few stray orbs of trapped, encapsulated air escaped from his nostrils and tickled their way up his face and across his eyes.
Dean let his lids drop again.
*******************************************************************
Sam ran as fast as his legs would let him, and that was fast. Fast for ten, and fast for him - because he was clumsy, sometimes. He tripped a lot. But he was focused on the trail; hopping gnarled roots and side-swiping low twigs. He was focused on his brother.
Please, please, please, don’t let anything happen to him. Please, let him be okay. Please, let him be there. Please, please, please, I’ll do ANYTHING. Please.
He’d brought his BB gun with him. Had no idea why, except…Dean had brought a gun with him. And something was wrong. Something was wrong and Sam knew it, and knew he’d never be able to shoot one of Dad’s guns. Not well enough to help Dean. Bringing the Daisy was dumb, and a baby move, and Dean would laugh at him and tease him about it later, FOREVER, and Sam would let him.
He skittered out of the copse of trees, faltering and coming to a halt in the sand. The sun was starting to set, and the whole lake was bathed in a tangerine glow. It made the water look like terra cotta, and Sam’s hands came up to his forehead, cupping his brow, to shield out the extra light.
He scanned right and left, along the shoreline and then back around the other way. There was something on the raft, but he couldn’t tell what; too small to be Dean. Just three little lumps. He scoured the sand around him, saw the imprint of footsteps, but nothing he could identify as having been made by his brother’s boots. And then his eyes jumped back to what he’d thought for a second was a rock or a piece of driftwood.
Right there. At the water’s edge.
Oh, no, no, no…
The black metal barrels of the shotgun, sticking out from the lake like some prehistoric fish that never quite made it to land. Sam surged forward and fell to his knees where the sand grew darker with the gentle lap of waves.
It was sacrilege. A horrible, unforgivable sin to treat one of their father’s weapons this way. Dean would never have let this happen. Not if he could help it.
Sam slid the double barrel from the lake, his air rifle dropped carelessly to the side. Water dripped and drizzled from the nose of the shotgun when he tilted it. His fingers ghosted over the darkened wet wood of the stock.
Nix.
His head shot up and he frantically scanned the water.
…bruising of chest…
He pulled in a sharp draw of air.
…death by drowning…
“Dean!”
Why aren’t you here, Dad?
“DEEEEAN!”
To his right, a parliament of shrikes sprang from the cedars and drew his attention.
Butcher birds. That’s what Dean and Dad called them, because they impaled their prey on sharp twigs and barbed-wire; came back for them after they were dead. Grasshoppers and moths and little lizards and stuff…
He scrambled back when the cool, electric water touched his knees. It felt wrong on his skin; like an ice cream cone licking HIM.
“Dean? You better not be playin’!”
He noticed the drop in temperature, and how a mist had begun to settle over the purple surface of the lake.
…three drops blood, whiskey, black animal…
“DEAN!”
Three drops blood. I’ve got blood. I’ve got blood I can give… Sam pushed himself up from the sand, hands wrapped tightly around both guns.
There was half a six-pack of Pabst in the fridge. He hadn’t seen Dad with a bottle in a long time, so no chance of whiskey. But the beer might be okay-enough. It got people drunk, right?
‘You can’t play loosey-goosey with spells, boys. Magic’s like a diner: no substitutions. Improvisation’s often the last refuge of the damned.’
Sam hadn’t ever really figured out the vocabulary around the ‘damned’ part, but he understood ‘no substitutions’. He knew that meant the waitress never let him have French fries instead of mashed potatoes when he ordered the meatloaf. He’d had more than one BIC pen point out those very words on menus all over the US. So, no. Not the beer. That wouldn’t work. But he knew where he could get tobacco. That just left the animal. And the thought of that stopped him cold.
A black animal. What was he supposed to do? Shoot a bear with his BB gun? Or shoot a bat. Or a bird.
The shrikes had returned to the tree, calling with a trill that said, ‘shack-shack-shack’. Sam could see their crimson bellies, but their cloaks were black, he knew that. Their wings and tails and heads and backs; those were black as coal.
*******************************************************************
When he breathed in, it would be water again. And it would hurt less, again. Like the breath before had, and the breath before that, and the breath before that one. The knowledge terrified him, and the salt water it brought to his eyes squeezed into anonymity amidst the lake water. The few bubbles his mute sob produced were small and quick, and he watched them rise with an overbearing doom.
Stupid! Stupid, Dean! You can’t even fight it ‘cause you don’t know what it is!
He pulled down with his hips, knees sliding slightly forward on the jagged rocks, and tried his best to shimmy his arms free.
Sam was right. He’s TEN and he was right. Dad would know. Dad would have known what it was before he ever got out a single weapon.
There was a slip, like the last bit of air had made his chest smaller than the circle of the sprite-thing’s arms. His elbows flared with stiff pain, but he got his hands up far enough to grab the arms of the creature.
Its flesh was like a sponge, and his fingers sunk in when he ringed its forearms. How can it be…How can it hold me so tightly? But he didn’t care. Really didn’t. He let the thought pass, and squeezed even harder, pulling his knees forward across the stony bottom.
A fan of bubbles burst past his head at both sides, the spray parting the short hairs at the back of his neck. The monster’s shriek was a siren in his head.
He pushed. Pushed hard, with everything he had. And for a single shining second, he was sailing like a missile toward the surface, apologies to Sammy and excuses to his dad forming like explosions in his brain until the hand around his ankle damped them out like a light.
*******************************************************************
He did it without even thinking: pumped the action, squinted down the sight, and pulled the trigger. Of course he hit his mark. It wasn’t that far a shot, and he’d been trained by both Dad and Dean.
The third shrike over, second branch up, hopped with a ‘peep’ when the BB passed through its skull. It fell to the ground as the other birds took to the sky.
He didn’t know what else to do.
…black animal…
Because something had Dean. Something bad had his brother and - damn it, Dean! - Sam didn’t know what to do except try to help him.
Its head dropped to the side as he picked it up. A misty spray of blood landed on its chest and disappeared immediately in the scarlet of the feathers there. The body of the tiny shrike sent warmth through his palm that made his stomach turn. He shoved the bird into the front pocket of his hoody, gathered up both guns, and headed back through the woods.
It was harder to maneuver this time. The sun was mostly down, and the moon didn’t penetrate the thick evergreens like the yellow daylight. He tripped a few times, landed once on his stomach, and threw up when he felt the cool, wet lump in his pocket press against his skin.
He rose and ran, made it out of the woods, and dropped the guns on the front porch of the cabin. It was a mile to Minnie’s store, a mile to the tobacco. He sprinted down the left hand rut of the drive that fed to the main road and lead into town.
*******************************************************************
What the hell were you thinkin’, Dean?
He could hear his dad plainly in his head, yelling and cursing and telling him what a stupid, impulsive shit he’d been. He hated it, hated hearing that truth while he died. As he was dying. He might already be dead.
But his dad’s voice crowded out the coos of the thing, shouted down the whispers of ‘See? With me? Breathe with me. You can breathe with me…Stay with me.’
He didn’t want to hear that. Didn’t want to breathe unless he was drawing in oxygen. Cool, sweet air.
You should have known, Son. That was an asshole move, runnin’ off half-cocked. No good hunter goes in without taking every weapon he has. That includes his head. That includes his knowledge.
His dad was right. He knew he was right. Dean had made a mistake. Fucked up big time. He knew better, now, and wished he’d known better then. He hoped his dad would be back soon. He didn’t want Sam to be with Minnie for too long. Didn’t want his brother to worry.
His dad was going to be pissed. His dad was…God, where was his dad? He wanted his dad. Needed his dad. Dad…
‘Here, with me,’ the thing whispered in his skull.
He couldn’t even imagine how his dad was going to blow when he found out he’d died because of some stupid lake fairy.
*******************************************************************
Sam had run about a quarter of a mile when a set of headlights passed, flipped a bitch, and pulled up alongside him. His tennis shoes skidded to a stop in the gravel, and he came face to face with Minnie in her Duster.
“Sam Winchester! What’re you doin’ runnin’ blind on the side of the road, eh?”
Sam leaned in the window, “I need a cigarette.”
It was clearly not the response the woman had expected, and she snorted a laugh, pulling streams of blue smoke up her nose. “Ain’t you a little young? Where’s your brother?”
Sam’s mouth opened and closed like a Muppet’s.
“Spit it.”
Sam’s head shook back and forth. He thrust his hand inside the car, fingers pinching and grabbing at the smoky air. “Just one cigarette, Minnie. Please. I won’t smoke it, I promise.”
The woman looked down at his greedy palm. Her Pall Mall drooped, and the long white ash dropped like a log from its end. “’S ‘at blood, yah?”
He pulled his hand back when Minnie went to grab it. He realized he’d been cradling the shrike in his pocket as he ran. There were ruddy streaks across his palm, black-red dried in the chains of lines on his fingers. “Minnie, please…” he said, and then burst into tears.
She reached across and yanked the passenger door handle, pushed the door open with her fingers. “Get in.”
He shook his head, tears flying from his eyes. “Huh-uh. Dean’s in trouble. He needs me, Minnie.”
“He’s at the lake, yah?”
Sam sniffed deeply, nodded.
“Get in the car,” she said.
Sam did.
*******************************************************************
He lay on the bottom, fingers dug into the velvety silt between the rocks. The small boulder the water freak had placed on his chest should probably have hurt more than it did, but he figured that was how he knew he was dead. So, there was that.
He didn’t think he was dead in the TRADITIONAL way. Not, like, DEAD dead. But there was no way he could imagine ever leaving the lake alive. Not when he was pinned to its floor like a feather-weight wrestler. Damn it, this is so bad. If he WASN’T dead, Dad was going to kill him for sure.
The sprite-thing wasn’t around. He didn’t know where it had gone. He didn’t know what it wanted or what more it would do to him. He really didn’t care. Didn’t care at all. He tried to move the rock again, but couldn’t get his arms to work quite right. He felt numb, but still cold. Heavy like cement, and light as a feather. He wondered if maybe his mom might swim by. He imagined her blond hair floating past him in the water, billowing like yellow silk. It was a nice thought.
The yellow descended, filled his senses, and then bloomed: dark orange, magenta, purple, and finally, black. Black, black, black, and cold. Bloomed to nothing; not the monster, not the lake, not the rock, not the fight. Not the yellow silk of his mother’s hair, soft against his cheek.
*******************************************************************
“What’s your plan?”
Sam stared at Minnie with wide eyes. “What?” It was totally WEIRD to have a grown-up ask a kid what the plan was. A TEN-YEAR-OLD kid.
“You got a plan, yah?”
“Yeah. I got a plan,” he told her, fingertips brushing gently against the tail feathers of the shrike in his pocket.
They stood at the back end of the beach, snake grass hissing in the breeze just behind them. The lake was shrouded in fog at the shoreline, and the moon made the water’s surface shine like a sheet of ice.
Minnie looked different to Sam without a cigarette in her mouth, with most of her lipstick rubbed away by nervous hands. She looked younger in the moonlight. He cocked his head and squinted at her. She knew something. Something she wasn’t telling him. It made him scared and mad and worried all at once.
He knew they should be hurrying. It had been so much longer than an hour. Much too long for Dean to be gone and maybe out there. In the lake somewhere. “It’s a nix, right?”
Minnie nodded. “Think so, yah.”
Sam nodded back and reached for the Pall Mall she was holding out for him. He slipped it from her fingers and into his pocket next to the bird.
Minnie looked at him for a second, then back out at the lake. She reached behind her head and removed a necklace from under her blouse. A silver pendant, shaped like a four-leaf clover, dangled from the silver chain. Minnie brought the bauble to her lips and kissed it lightly, then stepped forward in the sand and slipped it over Sam’s head. “St. Christopher,” she said, as if that explained everything.
Sam looked down at the medal and then at Minnie.
“Don’t let your feet get wet, yah?” she said. “Stay back from the edge of the water. Whatever you’re gonna do.”
He nodded and turned, taking a few steps toward the lake. He stopped suddenly and looked back at her, forlorn. “I need a knife,” he told her. “For the blood.”
“I got clippers,” said Minnie. She slid her purse off her elbow, where it had previously rested like any other grandma purse Sam had ever seen. She rooted through its contents and produced a small, shiny set of fingernail trimmers. “It’ll hurt more, to make a cut deep enough for the blood, but it’s all I got.”
Sam nodded and shrugged. Reached out his hand and shrugged again, just because there was too much nodding already. “The nix is gonna give Dean back,” he said, to the clippers more than to Minnie.
“I hope, yah…” he heard her whisper as he started once more for the water’s edge.
He didn’t know if he was supposed to say anything, or make the offerings in a certain order. Their dad had obviously never expected to meet up with a nix, hadn’t given specific instructions for the sacrifice - or maybe he’d just memorized the things to say and never written them down. The idea of that made Sam a little dizzy; the idea and the worry and Dean under the water somewhere.
He stopped himself six inches from the darkest swatch of sand. Pulling the cigarette from his pocket, he leaned forward slightly and crushed it over the water. The thin paper ripped between the pinch and press of fingers and thumb, and Sam watched the brown hairs of tobacco settle on the surface of the lake. He glanced once over his shoulder, but Minnie said nothing. There was more nodding. Then Sam took the shrike from his pocket.
The bird felt cold, small black feet drawn up to its belly. Sam ran his thumb across its crimson chest, tugged gently at one of its wings. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in his heart and head. He bent and placed the bird at the edge of the drifting tobacco spill. It bobbed once and then settled, body a black ink spot on the white surface of the lake.
Quickly, before he could think about pain or fear, or yes or no, he pulled up the levered arm of the nail clippers, swung it round, and set the trimmer’s sharpened jaws around a hem of skin on his left index fingertip.
The divot of flesh dropped to the sand with the clippers. He had just enough time to cup his right hand beneath his left and the blood was flowing, hot and red. He leaned forward, hands over the lake, and carefully allowed three drops of scarlet to escape into the water. The third one sizzled when it hit. And because Sam needed to say something, he whispered, “Please, just give him back.”
He retreated a foot, balled his left hand into a fist, and crammed it in his pocket. It burned and stung and bled there, like the pad of his finger had been attacked by a teeny, tiny shark.
A small whirlpool formed at the center of the shag of tobacco. Sam watched the undersized funnel swirl on the surface, twirling the brown shreds as if a drain had opened beneath them. The whirl caught his blood, and he watched the drops drag out like highway brake lights in the rain. Along the edge of the circle, the shrike bobbed gently and began to follow the spin.
He felt Minnie’s old hands on his shoulders, cold and shaking, through his sweatshirt. “Something’s happening.”
“Yah…” she whispered.
The speed of the whirl increased, the funnel deepened. Low, as if skimming the surface of the water, an angry shriek loosed itself across Pencil Lake. Sam stiffened the same time Minnie’s fingers squeezed tight. She pulled him back another foot as foamy, bearded waves pushed their way onto the sand just inches from where he stood.
The dead shrike spun like an airplane plummeting to earth. It tipped over the edge and into the cyclone at the same time the unearthly scream ended. Sam watched the bird disappear just as a white fountain of spray erupted next to the raft. Dean shot up like a beach ball held beneath the waves.
“Dean!”
He struggled, but Minnie managed to somehow hold him to his spot. Both their eyes were on Dean. He was floating face down a few feet from the raft; still, pale. So pale in the moonlight.
“Lemme go! I have to get him, Minnie! I have to get him now!”
Minnie turned him to her roughly, bent down in his face. “Whatever it is, it likes its young boys, eh?”
He licked salty tears from his lips and said nothing.
“You know how to drive, Sam?”
Drive? What was she talking about? He looked back over his shoulder at the white spot that was his brother, bobbing lifeless on the surface of the now-dark lake. Dean was in the WATER.
She shook him once; a quick jerk, and his face pivoted back to hers. “Your daddy teach you to drive?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Minnie released his shoulders and he felt the pressure of her fingers linger for a few seconds. He watched her dive into her purse and emerge with a ring of keys. She flipped through and found the one topped with a purple plastic sleeve. She held it out to him.
“This one’s the ignition, yah? If I don’t come right back out with him, you get in the Duster and drive to Cooper’s. Tell Butch. He’ll know what to do.”
But he didn’t want to be the wait-er again. Didn’t want Minnie to not come back like Dean hadn’t come back. His head shot around to the water again.
“Even if it’s…gone. You’re too little to swim ‘im back.”
She was right, Minnie was right. He nodded his way back to facing her. “You a good swimmer, Minnie?”
“Absolutely the best,” she said, and touched his cheek so sweet and brief it mightn’t have happened at all.
She was out of her crepe soles and ankle deep in when he called her name. She turned.
He ran up to her, keys jingling in his pocket, careful to keep his toes back from the water’s edge. He worked Minnie’s necklace over his head, brought the saintly medal to his lips, and kissed it. He didn’t feel foolish at all. “St. Christopher,” he said.
When she leaned toward him, he slipped it around her neck like an Olympic judge.
She turned back to the lake, took two giant strides, and dove beneath the surface.
*******************************************************************
Dean wasn’t breathing when Minnie dragged him to shore. He was ashen and motionless in a horrible, scary way. Minnie laid him carefully on his back. She bent back his head and blown her breath into him. She drew away with a cough; brown water poured from Dean’s mouth like a faucet.
Minnie flipped him, then. Turned his head to one side, brought his arms up, brought up the leg on the side she faced him. More water flowed, ugly and dark, from between Dean’s slack lips. She ran her trembling hands over his belly, pushing and rolling until the stream of liquid from Dean’s mouth trickled to a stop. She shifted him to his back again; breathed into his mouth and pumped against his chest until he coughed and moaned and sputtered.
She sent Sam over to the car, this time with a green-sleeved key, to get blankets from the trunk. He marveled at her strength when, once they’d got him all wrapped and tucked, she cradled Dean in her arms and marched with him to the car.
She ordered Sam into the passenger side and maneuvered Dean across his lap. “You hug ‘im tight and keep ‘im warm, yah?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. And he did his best.
*******************************************************************
When they reached the hospital in Alba, Dean was still unconscious, still blue and awful looking. Breathing, yes, and heart beating, but those were the only quiet signs he was alive.
The nurses and orderlies grabbed Dean from Minnie’s arms and rushed him toward the doors of the ER. Sam heard just a jumble of shouts: stage three hypothermia, secondary drowning, oxygen, lavage, possible brain damage. The last one brought his tears back full force, and he let them fall, unabashedly, against Minnie’s damp shoulder.
He felt terrible and selfish and eternally grateful when, despite the nurse’s urging, Minnie said she was fine. All she needed was some dry clothes, a blanket, a cigarette, and a shot of whiskey. She wasn’t going back into that ER and leave him all by himself, she told the nurse, and shooed her away with a shaky hand. Sam hugged her tighter, then. Tried to keep her warm.
Minnie’d changed into a set of scrubs and a pair of slipper socks. She had a blanket draped over her shoulders, and one of the orderlies had brought her a cup of coffee. Sam didn’t know if there was whiskey in it.
She looked like a big, old kid, he thought; fresh out of the tub, wrapped in pajamas and blankets, just about ready for bed. She told him to stay with her purse while she talked to the doctor over by the admissions desk.
Sam pressed against the tape and gauze covering his index finger. Minnie’d made sure they tended to him while she’d changed out of her wet clothes. They’d told him if they stitched the self-inflicted clipper wound, he’d end up with a funny pucker. He’d have to put up with it healing on its own, being tender for a while. He pressed harder and strained to hear what the doctor was telling Minnie about Dean. Through all of it, Minnie’s face stayed sad and worried until she turned to him.
“Sam. Bring me my purse.”
He hauled it over and she dug out a battered address book.
“You stay right here,” she said, pointing at the doctor. “I’ll get his dad on the phone.”
The doctor nodded and waited while Minnie wrestled the big phone over the counter and punched out the numbers to summon John Winchester. Sam swung Minnie’s purse back and forth, banging it against his leg, and imagining the electric ring of the phone in his head.
“John? Minnie Mueller.”
He thought Minnie Mueller was a pretty funny name, but hearing his dad’s spoken just before had prevented the emergence of a smile or snigger.
“John, I need you to get to Alba as soon as possible…No, no, listen to me. The job can wait. I got your boys here at the hospital. St. Grace’s.”
He held the purse in both hands so it dangled in front of his knees. He bounced it there, dipping and rising, and kept his eyes on the titled floor.
“Dean got into some trouble in the lake and-Now, hang on just a second. He’s-John, listen to me, will ya? I got the doctor right here, and he can-“ Minnie pulled the receiver from her ear and passed it with a grimace to the reluctant doctor.
“Mr. Winchester? Hello, I’m Dr. Ballard. I’ve-Yes, Mr. Winchester. Right now we-“
Sam heard his dad yelling through the phone, watched the doctor frown and nod and try to get a word in. Minnie walked him back to the bank of chairs on the far side of the waiting room. Sat, and pulled him down next to her.
“Your dad’ll be here soon, yah? He’s on his way soon as he’s off that phone.”
“What did the doctor say about Dean?”
She drew him in closer, edging the blanket around both their shoulders. “Said they’re doin’ everything they can.”
Which didn’t sounded like enough to Sam. He wanted her to say they’d fixed him. That he was okay. That when their dad got there, he could take them home and yell and scream and rip them both a new one. Even THAT seemed better than ‘…they’re doin’ everything they can.’
“Dean’s gonna be okay, right?”
“They’re doin’ everything they can,” Minnie said again, and it made Sam want his dad with a wild desperation.
*******************************************************************
He arrived like a storm, with a gust of wind and rain from outside, and blew straight to the admissions desk. “John Winchester. You’ve got my boy here.”
“Dad!” Sam yelled, and sprinted across the small waiting room. He threw his arms around his dad’s waist and hugged him tightly. His dad smelled like damp gunpowder and sweat; smelled like a hunt. Sam hated it because the scent meant danger, but loved it because it meant his dad was back safe. Safe enough to touch and smell.
“Hey, dude. You seen Dean yet?” John squatted down, rubbing his hands over Sam’s compact frame, confirming his wellness, his wholeness.
He shook his head back and forth. “They wouldn’t let us see him ‘til you got here.”
Minnie stepped up creakily behind Sam, the physical strain of this evening finally staking claim in her back and legs and shoulders. “John.”
“Minnie,” he said, rising, gripping Sam’s thin shoulders in his hands. “You wanna tell me what the hell happened?”
Her wrinkled hand shot up, pointer finger like a gnarled twig. “Don’t you come at me with your guff and frustration. You know me better than to do that.”
The admitting nurse leaned across the counter toward them. “Mr. Winchester, Dr. Ballard’s been paged.”
John spun on the nurse. “And?”
She pulled back from his bark, shifted all her weight to one foot.
Sam recognized that reaction in people. Their dad caused it a lot when he was angry.
“And…he’s in with your son now. He’ll be with you in just a few minutes. In the mean time,” she dropped a clipboard on the countertop and slid it across to John, “I need your insurance, and I need these medical history forms completed.”
John made a sour face that Sam knew to read as ‘sorry’, but it just made the nurse cross her arms. John took the clipboard and ushered Minnie and Sam back over to the deserted waiting room.
“Now you wanna tell me what the hell happened?”
Sam didn’t understand why his dad was acting mad at Minnie. Minnie’d saved Dean’s life.
“You don’t get to be angry,” she said, shouting him down before he could interrupt. “You think that boy brought this on himself?”
“He went out to that lake-“
“He’s a fourteen year old boy, living in the woods. What the hell else is he gonna do?”
“Doctor said he has defensive wounds. Bruises and cuts that-“
“It was a nix, John,” she hissed. “You ever run into one?”
“He shouldn’t have-“
“You’re the one set the standard he was tryin’ t’ meet. You wanna be pissed, you’d best start with yourself, yah? Best be thankful, too, you got a son strong enough to survive what most don’t. You think about that before you go in there and look at your child, eh?”
Shame was not an emotion John wore well. Minnie was right, she was completely right and honest, but Sam still hated what that did to their dad; his face dropped and his shoulders followed.
Sam stayed quiet while their dad brewed. He knew this was the moment to always watch most carefully. Because this was the place between Good John Winchester and Angry John Winchester. Sam knew them both, and he had a preference.
The clipboard of forms slapped a mini drum riff against John’s thigh, and then his head bobbed in time for a minute. His free hand ran roughshod through his beard. “Doctor said you did CPR at the lake. Probably saved Dean’s life.”
Minnie didn’t say a thing, so Sam did. “She swum him in from the raft, Dad. And she did CPR. He wasn’t breathin’.”
The drumming stopped but the nodding stuck. Sam felt something wet hit his upturned face.
“Thanks for that,” their dad said, and Minnie nodded in return.
*******************************************************************
John Winchester had seen many sights in his forty-odd years, but none buckled him as completely as that of his eldest in that hospital bed.
The doctor had explained to him how Dean had come in nearly dead; breathing shallowly, lungs and stomach filled with water, heart beating just a few times a minute. The temperature of the lake had probably helped save him as much as the liquid in his lungs had nearly drowned him. And maybe, just maybe, the hypothermia had saved Dean any permanent brain damage from oxygen deprivation.
Maybe, the doctor had said. They wouldn’t know until Dean woke up.
They were still working warmed saline through his son’s system, another IV delivering necessary antibiotics to stave off infection in the cuts on Dean’s legs, knees, and foot. The bandages on his knees were stained with discharge black as spilled coffee. A chest tube was sutured into his side, trailing from a spot between his two lowest ribs to a bag collecting murky, brown lake water. The green nasal canula lay like a snake across Dean’s face, stark against his pale skin.
John sat stiffly in a bedside chair, cradling a Styrofoam cup of vending machine caffeine that had long gone cold. He didn’t think his stomach could take the harsh acidity; it was already roiling and flipping and treating him cruelly. It had teamed up with his brain and his heart for an unending round of punishment: guilt, love, terror, regret. All of those things woven into the hairshirt of self-flagellation and recrimination John wore for the life he’d given his sons, for the questioning of that life.
If it weren’t for the hunt, he’d have been there. If it weren’t for the hunt, they WOULDN’T have been there. If it weren’t for the training, for the drills, the circumstances, Mary’s death - all of it, none of it - Dean would be safe and sound and somewhere else. Somewhere normal. But that road…that road was ten years gone for the Winchesters, and John sat with that knowledge biting into him.
He placed his hand flat against Dean’s chest, his ire rising as the outline of his own fingers and palm imitated that of the nix’s. The mulberry mottling of bruises seemed to serve as a barrier between his hand and the gentle rise and fall of his son’s breathing.
“I’m so sorry, Dean,” he whispered.
*******************************************************************
He was awake a long time before he opened his eyes. His lids felt brutally heavy, and he couldn’t trust for sure what he’d see when they lifted. He was freezing cold, muscles tense from shivering. There was something lying on his chest, but not as heavy as the boulder, not as scary and permanent.
He tried to wiggle his toes and realized he could, realized his feet weren’t inside boots, and he cursed in his head because - THREE FUCKING PAIRS OF SHOES! - and then he realized there wasn’t water between his toes. Wasn’t water between his fingers, but he couldn’t yet lift his arms. They felt tethered, and he imagined himself Gullivered to the bottom of the lake with lashes of seaweed and phytoplankton.
Except there wasn’t any water; no pressing weight of the lake on his face. There wasn’t water anywhere. Definitely not in his mouth and nose and ears and lungs.
He breathed in deep, coughed harshly, and opened his eyes when he felt hands on his shoulders, holding him down. He panicked because he expected the face of the water thing, but it wasn’t. It was his dad’s face, and that made him panic for a second more, until the relief flooded through him and he grabbed his dad and sobbed.
His dad’s hands ran up and down his back, cupped his head, shuffled through the short hairs on the back of his skull. “Hey, hey…It’s okay, Ace. You’re okay. You’re okay…” His dad eased him back down onto the bed.
Bed, I’m in a bed…“Where’s Sammy?” he tried to say, but it came out a croak and a cough. He cleared his sore throat and tried again. “Sammy okay?”
“Sam’s fine,” said his dad with a soft smile, brushing the bangs off his son’s forehead. “He’s out in the waiting room with Minnie.”
“Minnie?” Why was Minnie there? Why was HE there? HOW was he-? What-? “How did-? What happened?”
His dad’s brow gathered. “You don’t remember?”
He shook his head lightly. The lake. I remember…in the water, and… He looked at his dad, repentant frown pulling down at the corners of his mouth. “It took all my shoes.”
His dad’s face pinched and shattered. His large hands fumbled for the call button.
“Dad, your gun. The sh-sh-shotgun,” he moaned through a shiver.
“It’s okay, Dean. Jesus, son. It’s okay. Doesn’t matter.”
He felt his dad’s fingers twine between his and wanted to pull away; he didn’t deserve the comforting, didn’t deserve the forgiveness of his gentle hand. “I’m sorry.”
His dad sputtered, shook his head. “For what, kiddo?”
But before he could answer, there was a nurse there, responding to the call from the buzzer on his bedrail. His dad stepped aside while she checked all the tubes and wires and needles poking into him.
Dean stole glances at his body while the nurse worked, amazed the bruises were his, stymied by all the machines and lines and medical stuff going into and out of him. The nurse nodded to his dad, told him she’d page the doctor, and Dad nodded back, calling out ‘thanks’ as she left.
His dad moved back next to the bed and Dean tried to read his father’s face. He could usually tell what his dad was thinking, just by looking at him, but none of the anger he was expecting was there, only worry. And a sort of sad, silly smile.
“Am I okay?”
His dad laughed at that, long and hard, dopey grin growing and spreading all over him. “Yeah, Ace. You’re good. A-1.” He dropped his hand on Dean’s head and rubbed back and forth across his short hair.
Had he killed it and he just didn’t remember? Maybe he had a concussion. “Is it dead?”
John’s hand stilled on his head. “It’s taken care of, kiddo.”
His mind worked like a rusty mill; he couldn’t get the wheel to turn fast enough. Couldn’t power that spark of memory. His throat tightened and his chin puckered and pulled up. He didn’t care if he cried in front of his dad. He was angry and frustrated and just so fucking SCARED. “How?”
“Doesn’t matter, son.”
Hot tears spilled over his cheeks and his fists pounded against the mattress. “Yes, it does!”
“Hey, hey,” his dad said, rubbing his shoulder, now, placating and calm. “Dean. It’s okay, son. You’re safe now. It’s okay.”
“It’s not! I didn’t- I screwed up, Dad! I screwed up bad, and I-” He sucked in a breath and a wave of coughs hit. He tugged his arms around his middle as his aching lungs spasmed.
“Breathe, Dean. Just breathe. In through your nose, okay?”
He felt his dad’s nervous hands run huge circles on his back. It had me. I was dead. I was HIS and then-
‘Please, just give him back.’
He’d heard Sam’s voice through the water, and then the thing had screamed. It screamed and- “Sammy.”
“Sammy’s fine. Sammy’s safe, Dean.”
“It was Sammy,” he said, pulling in the stinging oxygen. “I heard Sammy’s voice.”
The circle pattern shifted into an up and down slide on his back.
“Sam and Minnie…They got it to release you and-“
“I’m sorry, Dad. I screwed up, sir. It’s all my fault.” And the silence that followed crushed him nearly as hard as the lake. Oh, God… His eyes squeezed shut and he fell back against the bed. Felt his dad’s hand slide away from behind him.
“Dean, listen to me. Yeah. You made a couple of mistakes. You didn’t listen to me, didn’t follow orders. And that thing got you, that evil son of a bitch got you. I don’t know how you survived, and goddamnit, son, I’m so glad you did. But I do know it wasn’t because you thought things through.”
His dad’s words sliced and cut and shamed him. He hadn’t thought, hadn’t prepared, he’d only wanted to kill that thing in the lake.
“I won’t forgive you risking your life because you didn’t use your brain. You’re too smart for that, Dean. And I’ll kick your ass every time I see you making that mistake. You have to think, son. You have to plan, or none of your other skills will ever keep you alive long enough to do any good.”
Right. His dad was right; he was stupid. God, he’d nearly got himself killed. Could have gotten SAMMY killed. Maybe Minnie, too. He had a sudden flash of her holding him, carrying him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Ace. Just…learn from it. Remember it for next time.”
Next time? “Yes, sir.”
“Hunting’s serious business. You can’t go in blind. You gotta plan…”
Sammy knew. Sammy said- “Yes, sir.” And the familiarity of this ebb and flow, the mistake and the forgiveness, was a life ring thrown by his dad. He grabbed on for all he was worth. Didn’t pull away, or even want to, when his dad’s hand found his again.
“It’s just, improvisation’s often the last refuge of the damned.”
It was a pardon, a pass; mercy that said, ‘We fall and then we get back up again…’
“What about MacGyver? He improvised all the time,” Dean said, squeezing his dad’s hand just a little tighter.
“Our name’s Winchester, sport.”
The door to the room swung in and Sam and Minnie entered, Minnie pushing his little brother forward, guiding him by the shoulders.
“Hi,” Sam said, looking scared and anxious.
Dean tried to scoot up straighter in the bed. “Hey, Sammy.” Then he cast a glance at Minnie, who nodded, and he nodded back.
Sam walked to the bed and gently touched his arm.
Dean saw the white bandage on his brother’s finger. “What happened?”
Sam’s boney shoulders hopped up in a shrug. “Got cut. It’s okay, though.”
Dean looked at his dad.
“He’s fine, Dean.”
Sammy squeezed his arm lightly, poked at it a little with his bandaged finger, ran the white gauze up the inside of Dean’s forearm. “I’m fine, Dean,” Sam said with a confident grin.
Behind Sam, Minnie made one of her noises; a grunt or a sneeze or a ‘screw you, John Winchester,’ Dean wasn’t really sure.
She was wearing blue scrubs like a doctor and there wasn’t a Pall Mall in sight. When she came close, his head got a little swimmy; something about the way she smelled that brought the lake right back to his chest. The taste of it in his mouth. Another slippery memory ghosted through his head and he swallowed hard.
“Thanks, Minnie,” he said, though he wasn’t sure exactly why he was saying it.
She just nodded.
Sam hoisted himself carefully onto his bed, pulling their dad’s journal up with him. He opened it and flipped through a few pages, stopped at one and smoothed the spine. “It was a nix, Dean. But it’s gone now.”
Sam smiled and placed the journal in Dean’s lap, looking expectantly at their dad.
A pen found its way from their dad’s front shirt pocket and into Sammy’s hand. Sam pointed at the journal and pushed the pen at Dean. “You gotta fill it in.”
He didn’t have a clue what Sam was talking about, or why his dad was still smiling. Why Minnie was so quiet and soft looking all of a sudden. “Huh?”
Sam’s eyes rolled. “You gotta fill it in, Dean. In Dad’s journal. Gotta put a one there, ‘cause now you know about nixes.”
He did. He knew all about them. But he suspected Sam and Minnie knew a little bit more. He shook his head and pushed the pen away.
“Come on, Ace. Your first entry,” his dad said, nodding at him.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t…It wasn’t…”
His dad leaned in closer. “The counts aren’t about kills, Deano. You know that. Marks are for knowledge. Learning. Go ahead.”
“Sammy should. Not me.”
His brother’s eyes were wide, head shaking back and forth fervently. “No way. It was you, Dean. You gotta do it.”
He pushed the proffered pen away again. “You did it right, Sammy. You make the mark.”
Sam looked from Dean to their dad and back again.
Minnie shifted and chuffed from the seat she’d taken at Dean’s bedside. “Seems to me, anybody survives a nix is one who defeated it, too, yah? But I’m just an old lady.”
“Both of you oughtta make it,” John said.
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t do anything except-“
His dad’s hand firmly gripped his shoulder. “You ever gonna make a jack-ass move like that again? You ever gonna go out without knowing what you’re dealing with?”
He shook his head again. “No, sir.”
His dad’s heavy hand squeezed once. “Good boy.”
“Come on, Dean,” Sam urged, bouncing a little on the bed.
Dean wrapped shaky fingers around Sammy’s hand, and together they made their first marks in this bible of their father’s.
End