(no subject)
Title: Two raven’s on a rusty scathe.
Written by Professional Scatterbrain/pr_scatterbrain
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything (including the title which is taken lovingly from the lyrics of Emiliana Torrini’s Honeymoon Child).
Rating: Pg - 13
Summary: Dean can walk two different ways, but he really should be waiting in the hotel or in the car for Sam.
Crossover: Supernatural and Drop Dead Fred.
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Don't you just hate it when you're right about the wrong things? - Mickey in Drop Dead Fred.
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Dean doesn’t drive the Impala much anymore. His hands shake you see. The demon must have taken a little something for safekeeping, something Sam didn’t get back after he subverted the contract made. One year after the crossroads and Dean still had his soul. Well, all the bits and parts that counted. His hands just shook a little. Too much to hold a steering wheel, but not too much in other departments. That’s what Sam said anyway. He’s working on making Dean’s hands stop shaking.
Among other things.
Dean wasn’t told to stay in the hotel or in the car today. He knows he shouldn’t wander off. Sam likes to know where he is now, after coming so close to losing him. But Dean wasn’t told to stay in the hotel or in the car today. He wasn’t told anything today and Dean knows he probably shouldn’t wander off but Sam’s in the library and... he wasn’t told not too, and the cerulean sky stretches on and on before him and, he wasn’t told not too.
Gravel crunches under his scuffed boots.
Sometimes Dean sees one of them, and sometimes they see him. But it’s been a while since either of those things has happened so when Drop Dead Fred tackles him to the ground and Go To Hell Herman jumps on top of the dog pile, it is a surprise. And then Dean is being pulled from the sidewalk into the park; being lead by Namby-Pamby in her neon tutu and Fred in his awful grass green suit into the park where the others are. Not all of them, but more than Dean has seen in once place for many years.
“It’s a school excursion.” Namby-Pamby explains jumping around, “District Sports day!”
“We can play all day,” cries Velcrohead in his too small sailor suit, “I call not ‘it’!”
Then he darts off, not waiting to decide on the game or exactly who was 'it'. He was always jumpy like that though. Full of beans. Never still. Like a fox terrier. The others all know this, even Dean (who has been away for so long), and had learnt how to deal with it. A couple of the others run off too, none really caring who was ‘it’ as long as they could run around too. Dean in his worn jeans and soft cotton t-shirt wants to run but the boots on his feet aren’t made for that so much as for fighting (not running around with) other things.
Over his shoulder he looks for Sam.
“He isn’t there.”
Drop Dead Fred is next to him, finger up his nose looking at Dean with wiry eyebrows twitching ever now and then. Technically they should be looking for Sam or for Mickey ‘fart pants’ Bunce’s daughter, Natalie. But Drop Dead Fred has never been one for ‘should’s’ or anything else he didn’t feel like going along with. Dean still remembers enough to remember that. He remembers liking Fred and liking all of the others and Dean tries hard to keep remembering that. But it’s been so long and his boots have steel caps that are too heavy for playing in the park’s green grass.
Now they crunch daisies.
But that’s still better than slipping on blood or gore or shadows or eyes that aren’t ink filled black but should be because so much blood and gore really shouldn’t make Dean slip if the eyes that did it aren’t ink filled black. And now he is confused because just like Sam came back different, Dean, although he didn’t go anywhere, is different too. He was different before, Sam again, but in a different way. But the word itself ‘different’ has been used too much that it is loosing its meaning and all Dean can hold on to is that he wasn’t told to stay in the hotel or the car today.
He can walk two different ways.
Used to be one, should probably still be one if everyone had played by the rules.
Or at least known (to respect) them.
With one eye closed, Fred twists his gangly body, not truly satisfied to remain still while everyone else was having so much fun around them. He is torn between running - playing - and Dean. But Fred does remember Dean and he still does like him and they still are friends. Okay, maybe they, all of then, even Graggy, are friends, but Fred likes Dean the way he likes Lizzie in that separate, different way to all the other children he had spent time with. Dean is his favourite (while Sam is still not).
“The mega bitch is still in the reference section.”
Velcrohead is squealing now as he and Namby-Pamby head towards the fountain. With one leap they are both drenched and Dean wants more than anything to remember that kind of abandonment. Slowly he draws himself closer. His boots are heavy (good for kicking), and sturdy (good for lasting the distance) and somehow it’s easier for them to sink like stones into the water. Fred likes the water, but his pale green pants are the type to shrink so he makes a show of rolling the hems up before coming in after all of them.
Graggy notices.
No one really finds Graggy amusing, and Fred certainly doesn’t find it funny to be pushed flat on his face into the water. Graggy is laughing and the others are narrowing their eyes and contemplating pushing him into the water and then they do the moment Graggy turns his attention on Dynamite Dean. Because they are all fond of Dean and even if they aren’t allowed to see him like they used to all of them would still chose him over Graggy any day.
“No fair!” Graggy cried as the others surround him, spraying him with water.
There aren’t too many of them left. Most went the way Go-Go-Mouth did. Green pills and relieved parental smiles. And then there is Dean. Darling Dean. He used to be their Darling Dynamite Dean but Fred is the only one who understands that he isn’t anymore. He’s just Dean. He’s not allowed to be anything else anymore. And... There are rules about what their place is. Fred knows them and so should Dean.
But he doesn’t follow them anymore.
Not allowed too... even if Sam didn’t tell him to stay in the hotel or in the car today.
Dean’s toes are swimming in water now and he really would like to go deeper out into the fountain and sit under the pink marble Angel shooting water out of her fingertips but he thinks if he goes any further the steel in his boots with make him sink too deep. Then the back of his knees connect with the ends of the fountain and he thinks ‘yes, this might do,’ even if it probably wouldn’t. The marble is cool against the soaked fabric of his jean and it is even cooler against his fingers as he sits down and grips it tightly.
He really doesn’t want to sink any further.
Graggy is up now and they are all laughing because really even if they like Dean more, they still do somewhat like Graggy and they all want to play in the water for as long as they can. Sports days’ don’t last forever and they never really see each other all together anymore. Namby-Pamby beacons Dean with one hand. She is everyone’s favourite - Dean thinks it still must be true. It had been true a few years ago. He was sure it had been. He thinks he remembers that correctly; she had not only been everyone’s favourite, she had been his too.
“Dynamite?”
Dean tries to focus on her and Herman, the man swinging Namby-Pamby in the air a little. Namby-Pamby was Herman’s favourite too. Herman was one of the older ones, older then Fred, than Dean, and older than Namby- Pamby too. No one knew where Velcrohead or Graggy fit in. Dean didn’t even think he should be in the water; he saw a few sparks and an ear floating around unattached to its owner.
“Dean? Can you hear me?”
Fred was right to make a fuss about his suit for it has shrunk a little. It was tight against his legs and his arms. The seams were on the verge of bursting as Fred leans in close to Dean’s face. All red hair and matching green eyes right in front of Dean with dirty fingers twitching and touching his face with concern. Sometimes Fred could be kind - Dean had memories of that. Ones he knew to be true.
“Sam isn’t here.”
Fred isn’t like the others. Not really. Not anymore. But he isn’t like Dean either. Elizabeth only did so much. Sam did more. Dean used to only walk one way, now Sam makes him walk two. Sammy and Lizzie are the same you see, except different. The others know about them, but not the way Dean and Fred do. The others know in a round about way. Dean and Fred know more than any other the others about the special ones. Dean in particular, Fred too but in a different way. There were mitigating factors. Always were.
“He needs me.”
“No,” Fred corrected as they sat in the fountain, “He wants you.”
The fabric of Fred’s suit isn’t soft and really isn’t clean but Dean touches it. The frayed edges around the worn button holes give a little under his tentative touch. Fred is watching him. Trying to make him remember. Fred always remembers. Fred’s memory stretches further back than anyone thinks; He remembers the first mega bitch (Dean wished Fred wouldn’t call Sam the second) and how the snip of scissors cutting through long brown hair sounded in the too quiet house. He remembers the sound of masking tape as it wound around and around the box Lizzie had put him in and her mother had imprisoned him in. And he remembers Dynamite Dean and Julie the eight year old girl who hadn’t wanted anything from him but a game of hide and seek each afternoon after school.
He also remembers what Sam is like; Sam, one of the few special ones.
“We only stay when they need us. We leave when they want us to stay.”
Dean’s one of the lost ones. The lost one. The others play on. They were happy to see Dean. They had not expected to see him again; but they did not expect many things. Fred understood that. He also understood that his eyes should match Dean’s, and would have if things with Sam had ended like things with Elizabeth had.
Dean’s eyes are too dark now; they don’t match anything, “He won’t let me leave.”
Dean is pale then. Not like Fred though. Pale like he had said something he regretted saying. There was a difference between saying something in your head and articulating it outside it. There were no freckles left. Not even one. Sam had loved them so. He had counted them once. Or maybe that he been when they got chicken pocks when they were children. No, it couldn’t be that because only Sam had gotten chicken pocks. Not Dean. Nor Fred. They didn’t get chicken pocks. They weren’t meant to get chicken pocks. Sam was. Natalie was. Even Lizzie; though she didn’t. The Megabitch never let her out to play enough to get sick.
“He won’t let you leave or you won’t leave?” Fred questioned, blunt.
Fred could be blunt. He wasn’t the nice like Namby-Pamby. He sometimes verged on mean. He always liked to get his way. To win. He only went to certain children because of that. Usually not special ones. Dean used to be like Namby-Pamby but different. He had only gone to certain children too, special ones. Because he... Sam.
“Sammy needs me.”
Then their eyes still don’t match but they meet, and Fred is kind then, “He makes you walk and talk and move and be one of them, but you aren’t.”
“Sam doesn’t know that.”
“He doesn’t want to.”
Fred thinks that Sam had needed a brother more than a friend and that was okay when Sam was eight and alone because John was always away. But it wasn’t okay when Sam decided he wanted a brother more than anything else and had the power (he was one of the special ones) to get what he wanted. It’s not alright now, when Sam makes Dean walk and talk, and move and do everything like one of them, when Dean should have left and been allowed to stay with eight year old Julie because she only wanted someone to walk her home from school and sit with her during lunchtime.
Sam was one of the special ones.
But so was Lizzie and even though Fred swore that she knew he was still there, she didn’t make him come back like Sam did. Dean was meant to have stayed with Julie. That was how it worked. Sure, Fred wasn’t exactly meant to stay near to Lizzie through Natalie, but that was different. Fred knew what Sam was doing to Dean (there were whisperings of it). And Dean wasn’t meant to be Dean. He was meant to be Dynamite Dean, their Darling Dynamite Dean and...
What Sam was doing was unnatural.
Making people believe instead of play along that Dean was real. Making them see Dean instead of pretend to see him. Making Dean walk and talk and tethering him to that way. To that life... Fred had glimpse of that power with Lizzie. For a split second or two he was like her and he was real in a second way and walked in a second way - like her, like Sam, like the rest of ‘them’ - but only for a second. Dean had been like ‘them’ for much, much longer.
And now there wasn’t a single freckle left.
And now he was shivering and shaking - not just his hands - like the boy he had been sent all those years ago to protect. Fred remembers even if Dean doesn’t. He remembers what Dean had been like before, how their eyes matched, how they rolled in the mud and broke the good china every second Tuesday. His memories stretch back to the start, to before; the explosions, the maniac grin on Dean’s face as he grabbed Namby Pamby’s hand and sprinted to safety before whatever he’d rigged with TNT blew up.
“Dean?”
At the call of his name, Dean’s snaps to attention.
“Dean!”
Fred only just manages to catch his hands, to hold him there for a moment longer. His hand shakes too; their eyes do match then. Nails dig into skin and Fred wished they weren’t his. Sam is still in the distance. Tall and making echoes as he moves through space as if he owns it. It and other things.
“He didn’t tell me to stay hotel or in the car.” Dean rotes and Fred breaks.
His grip loosens for a second and all it ever took was a single second.
Dean is gone once more, and Fred...
Well, Fred is... it doesn’t matter really anymore, but his hands keep shaking.
***