FIC: "Parental" (1/1, SPN) Spoilers for 5.13 and 5.14
Parental (1/1)
Spoilers for 5.13 and 5.14
It’s only later that John wondered about it, years and now decades later, as he finally began to put the puzzle together. Wondered if he was picking up on something with Sammy even before the fire. It should have been ridiculous, but he couldn’t shake the idea, not after he’d found out about the other children.
They’d talked about having kids, him and Mary - had felt driven to it, even - so it wasn’t as if Sam had been unwanted or unexpected. Four years had been a bigger gap than they’d hoped for, but that was just how things happened sometimes. But when Mary put the baby in his arms, a flicker of something - revulsion? - had bubbled up from deep inside and he’d fought hard to keep an appropriate smile on his face.
When he’d first held Dean, he’d felt too small to contain his joy.
With the noise and activity of friends and neighbors visiting the new baby, he all but forgot. And for six months there was no time for strange feelings, not with 2 AM feedings and colic and Dean coming down with chickenpox. And in the early years, when there was nothing but panic and confusion and relearning the smell of gunpowder and the glint of knives, he blamed it on his subconscious, stupid human psychology, putting Mary’s death on Sam. It was ludicrous.
It was harder when Sam started growing up. The boy didn’t think like a soldier, and his smarts were in all the wrong places. It was easy to go a little overboard when he got angry with Sam, that mix of disgust and hate and vindictiveness adding fire to anything he said to his son. Oh, Dean got yelled at on occasion, and lectures, and punishments - he might have been the better soldier and all too often too old for his age, but he was as human as anyone and a teenager, too - but never, not even once, did Dean’s mere presence provoke such hurtful feelings in him as Sam’s did.
He always regretted those last words to Sam, when he ran off to college. He’d been so proud when he’d found the acceptance letter in Sam’s duffel, had thought, My God, Mary, can you believe it? One of our boys! In his head, there was nothing but pride and joy and relief that maybe - just maybe - one of them would get out of this and be normal again. They knew some hunters who had normal lives most days of the week - he saw his boy doing what he could in both worlds, the supernatural and the mundane - doctor, lawyer, whatever - and knowing the love of a good woman who’d value him for more than his ability to load a rifle or chant an exorcism. For the first time he envisioned grandchildren that were wanted and planned and came after a wedding.
But when Sam found him, minutes later, all he could think of was that Sam was abandoning his unit, and that was a court martialing offence. It didn’t end well. He tried three times to pick up the phone, or look up his email address at school - and each time he was paralyzed. He gave up. Prayed for Sam, on the off chance that something out there was actually listening, and kept his distance.
A few months later he started sending Dean on solo missions. He claimed it was because the boy’s ready for it - which was true - but it was really because he’s afraid that he would start treating Dean like he treated Sam. He kept his distance there, too, afraid of turning into some kind of monster that can never do right by either of his boys.
The pieces of the puzzle started to fit together soon after that. He started to wonder, as the patterns emerged, if there was something more to it all this while. The wrong reaction to have to an infant, and a child, and a teenager, but a reaction for a reason nonetheless. It turned out that Sammy wasn’t the only one visited by the Demon. There’s something there.
As he dies - driven, strangely, to save Dean beyond even normal parental reason, and scared to think he might not have done the same for Sam - John remembers: remembers his neck snapping and Mr. Campbell’s eyes turning yellow; remembers Sam starring at Mary with unbridled awe; remembers saying yes; remembers Dean’s fear of the thing that wore his skin; remembers that thing touching his mind and leaving something foreign and horrible within him; remembers even the moment before all of that, when his dislike of that blonde girl from a few blocks over had been twisted into a farce of true love; curses Michael for those last few words he'd whispered in Dean's ear - and he curses a Heaven he’d never really believed in until that moment, curses Michael and the cherubim and God. He curses all the powers of good and all the powers of evil, begins plotting his escape, starts planning how he’ll warn his boys - his boys, his, his and Mary’s, not Heaven’s and not Hell’s -
The Pit is designed for forgetting.
Spoilers for 5.13 and 5.14
It’s only later that John wondered about it, years and now decades later, as he finally began to put the puzzle together. Wondered if he was picking up on something with Sammy even before the fire. It should have been ridiculous, but he couldn’t shake the idea, not after he’d found out about the other children.
They’d talked about having kids, him and Mary - had felt driven to it, even - so it wasn’t as if Sam had been unwanted or unexpected. Four years had been a bigger gap than they’d hoped for, but that was just how things happened sometimes. But when Mary put the baby in his arms, a flicker of something - revulsion? - had bubbled up from deep inside and he’d fought hard to keep an appropriate smile on his face.
When he’d first held Dean, he’d felt too small to contain his joy.
With the noise and activity of friends and neighbors visiting the new baby, he all but forgot. And for six months there was no time for strange feelings, not with 2 AM feedings and colic and Dean coming down with chickenpox. And in the early years, when there was nothing but panic and confusion and relearning the smell of gunpowder and the glint of knives, he blamed it on his subconscious, stupid human psychology, putting Mary’s death on Sam. It was ludicrous.
It was harder when Sam started growing up. The boy didn’t think like a soldier, and his smarts were in all the wrong places. It was easy to go a little overboard when he got angry with Sam, that mix of disgust and hate and vindictiveness adding fire to anything he said to his son. Oh, Dean got yelled at on occasion, and lectures, and punishments - he might have been the better soldier and all too often too old for his age, but he was as human as anyone and a teenager, too - but never, not even once, did Dean’s mere presence provoke such hurtful feelings in him as Sam’s did.
He always regretted those last words to Sam, when he ran off to college. He’d been so proud when he’d found the acceptance letter in Sam’s duffel, had thought, My God, Mary, can you believe it? One of our boys! In his head, there was nothing but pride and joy and relief that maybe - just maybe - one of them would get out of this and be normal again. They knew some hunters who had normal lives most days of the week - he saw his boy doing what he could in both worlds, the supernatural and the mundane - doctor, lawyer, whatever - and knowing the love of a good woman who’d value him for more than his ability to load a rifle or chant an exorcism. For the first time he envisioned grandchildren that were wanted and planned and came after a wedding.
But when Sam found him, minutes later, all he could think of was that Sam was abandoning his unit, and that was a court martialing offence. It didn’t end well. He tried three times to pick up the phone, or look up his email address at school - and each time he was paralyzed. He gave up. Prayed for Sam, on the off chance that something out there was actually listening, and kept his distance.
A few months later he started sending Dean on solo missions. He claimed it was because the boy’s ready for it - which was true - but it was really because he’s afraid that he would start treating Dean like he treated Sam. He kept his distance there, too, afraid of turning into some kind of monster that can never do right by either of his boys.
The pieces of the puzzle started to fit together soon after that. He started to wonder, as the patterns emerged, if there was something more to it all this while. The wrong reaction to have to an infant, and a child, and a teenager, but a reaction for a reason nonetheless. It turned out that Sammy wasn’t the only one visited by the Demon. There’s something there.
As he dies - driven, strangely, to save Dean beyond even normal parental reason, and scared to think he might not have done the same for Sam - John remembers: remembers his neck snapping and Mr. Campbell’s eyes turning yellow; remembers Sam starring at Mary with unbridled awe; remembers saying yes; remembers Dean’s fear of the thing that wore his skin; remembers that thing touching his mind and leaving something foreign and horrible within him; remembers even the moment before all of that, when his dislike of that blonde girl from a few blocks over had been twisted into a farce of true love; curses Michael for those last few words he'd whispered in Dean's ear - and he curses a Heaven he’d never really believed in until that moment, curses Michael and the cherubim and God. He curses all the powers of good and all the powers of evil, begins plotting his escape, starts planning how he’ll warn his boys - his boys, his, his and Mary’s, not Heaven’s and not Hell’s -
The Pit is designed for forgetting.